Reflecting on Your Marking
Constructive Alignment and Rubrics
Fair Grading
Marking Efficiently and Effectively: Feedback
How do we provide feedback that will be useful for and beneficial to students? Here, we will consider ways to mark constructively – as in, ways that will help students improve their knowledge and skills.
The Dialogic Feedback Cycle
Providing feedback on an assignment is one of three key pieces to helping students learn and improve through completing assessments as part of the Dialogic Feedback Cycle outlined by Beaumont et al (2011).
The first step is providing Preparatory Guidance, which happens before students begin an assessment. This includes explaining the assignment requirements, introducing students to the rubric that will be used to assess their work, providing models and examples, and answering their questions.
The second step is providing In-Task Guidance, which happens as students are completing or preparing for the assessment. This can include feedback on drafts – if feasible, which time constraints can make challenging – or self-assessed practice assessments, peer evaluation, and general tips.
Finally, the third step is providing Performative Feedback, after students have completed the assessment. This feedback should not only show students where they have done well or poorly on this specific assignment, but it should also provide them with specific advice for how to perform better on future assessments.
The Purpose of Feedback
Consider what purpose you would like the feedback you provide to serve. One way to do this is to complete the following before you begin grading:
After reading my feedback, I want students to be able to…
While a general statement is important, you might also consider completing this statement for individual students based on their current achievement level and their most significant opportunities for growth and improvement.
Feedback Samples
Below are four feedback samples. As you review each of these samples, think about the following questions:
- What is your immediate reaction to the feedback?
- As a learner, what information would the feedback give you?
Common Issues
Each of the feedback samples provided demonstrated a common issue:
- There was too much feedback to effectively take in.
- The shorthand was not explained, and therefore could not be understood.
- There was no indication of specific strengths or areas for further improvement.
- The feedback did not demonstrate respect for the student or provide specific advice for improvement.
So, what does quality feedback look like?
Quality Feedback
Quality feedback meets three criteria:
To help ensure you feedback can be understood, be as specific as possible. Draw students’ attention to specific examples of strengths and weaknesses, and explain which criteria they did or did not meet and how.
Use words and phrases students will know. This includes avoiding – or explaining – any disciplinary terms or jargon. If you’re going to use any shorthand, make sure students know this and have a legend or key available to remind them what the markings mean.
It can be hard to take in a lot of feedback, particularly if it includes comments on weaknesses or areas for improvement. Pure criticism is hard to work through, and students might miss recognizing what they are doing well. To help ensure your feedback can be accepted by students so they can learn from it, limit your feedback to a few key points, and be as positive as possible – help them recognize their strengths, as well, and phrase your comments so they talk about “the assessment” and not “you,” the student. Remember that your comments are “notes to people” as well as “reflections on an assessment.”
Students are very rarely going to write an essay on the same topic twice, or complete the same problem set or lab more than one. For feedback to be useful in helping students to improve, it needs to be about the process of completing the assessment over the specific content. Think about criteria that will always apply to that type of assessment and help students recognize areas for improvement that will apply next time, too.
Feedback that provides concrete suggestions for developing skills and improving student work is called “learner-centred.” It should provide students with a clear goal to work towards and specific actions to take in order to achieve it.
Recognizing that students will probably never complete the same assessment again, you can also ask students to respond to the feedback they receive to help them draw general lessons that will be applicable in the future. This is especially valuable to do with final assessments in a course, since feedback is most useful if it can be acted on quickly, and it will likely be some time before students attempt a similar assessment again. You might ask students to write out a brief strategy for how they’ll approach the next assessment or what they will focus on improving, and encourage them to review it next time they have a similar assessment to complete. This can also help you confirm that students have understood the feedback they received.
Feedback Strategies
This strategy involves limiting your feedback to three key points:
- First, comment on the strongest aspect of the assessment, or the best-met criteria.
- Then, address the weakest aspect of the assessment, or the criteria which needs the most improvement.
- Finally, end by highlighting an aspect which could be quickly improved.
This is an explicitly learner-centred strategy where you focus your feedback on identifying what would make the biggest improvement in a student’s work: written communication skills, content knowledge, following criteria, etc. Your feedback should highlight this for students and identify concrete steps they can take to address this need, such as seeking help with punctuation through the Student Success Centre’s writing tutors or reviewing the rubric before submitting. This strategy meets each student where they are and helps them improve their individual areas of need (Lizzio and Wilson, 2008).
Summary
Let’s return to the question we posed at the start of this section: How do we provide feedback that will be useful for and beneficial to students?
We can now provide the following answers:
- Consider what you want students to be able to do or improve as a result of your feedback
- Give comments that can be understood, accepted, and acted on
- Use positive and learner-centred feedback strategies
- Feedback Sandwich
- Next Step
Activity 2 – Sample Grading Activity Revisited
We are going to revisit the scenario and re-evaluate the sample assignment from the first worksheet. As a reminder, here is the scenario:
Scenario
You have 30 short-answer responses to mark and you have set a goal to spend 1.5 hours to grade this assignment. This means that you have 3 minutes to mark each paragraph (90 minutes / 30 assignments).
The question students were asked to answer is as follows:
“Explain what we can do as citizens to reduce the effects of global warming. Consider factors such as recycling, the impact of fossil fuels, and the impact of consumerism.”
Instructions
- This time, before you set the timer, answer the following question for yourself:
- What is the assignment intended to assess? For instance, you might decide it is assessing their writing skill, their content knowledge, or both.
- Set a timer for three minutes. Re-read the paragraph, noting relevant strengths and weaknesses. Assign a new grade out of ten (/10) and provide feedback for the student. Try to complete this within the time limit.
- Complete the reflection questions below.
Reflection Questions
- What was different about marking the sample this time? What was easier? Harder?
- Were you able to finish marking and assign a grade within 3 minutes? Did it feel rushed, or was it a comfortable amount of time? Would you be able to keep up this pace for another 29 assignments?
- How did you decide what mark to assign the paragraph? What strengths and/or weaknesses in the response influenced this decision?
- Do you feel that the feedback you provided will help the student develop their skills and/or knowledge? Would it help them improve their grade if they were to submit this assignment again?