Module 7
Assesment and feedback – formative feedback to help students succeed
This module focuses on what effective assessments are and how to incorporate those into your online course. A key part of ensuring your assessments are effective is to provide meaningful feedback and ask for follow through from your students; which brings us to the topic of how to facilitate your course. Posting content, creating activities, providing clear communications and fruitful interactions are all essential components but if we do not look at how to close the feedback loop, students can be left feeling that the learning experience was one-sided.
Objectives:
- Develop and implement effective principles and strategies for assessment of student participation and performance
- Implement best practices in instructor self-assessment
- Identify best practices in student self-assessment
- Review the distinctions between course assessment and evaluation
- Understand and implement recommended course evaluation methods
- choose ways to enhance facilitation in online course interactions and identify appropriate connections between facilitation roles and skills and specific Blackboard activities.
According to the OSCQR Rubric, a variety of assessment methods is suggested
Meaningful Feedback
Closing the loop in feedback is a step often overlooked. Incorporate in your assignments that students are required to respond in some way to the feedback received, so you know students have reviewed the feedback and will apply it in their next steps.
The Importance of Feedback
Proficiency in providing feedback topped the list of all those faculty generated instructional practices that had an impact on the students’ rating of overall faculty performance. Providing continuous feedback was also strongly correlated with lower student withdrawal rates. Faculty who said they were proficient in giving feedback on student performance, and in identifying errors, their causes, and how to correct them, had these instructional practices confirmed by students who expressed satisfaction with the amount of feedback given on assignments and projects.
When faculty made students aware of the traits of highly effective learners and encouraged them to question their own and others’ assumptions, student satisfaction with feedback was also heightened. This instructional practice was strongly associated with higher student retention.
Providing support and a helping hand to students encountering difficulties were also highly appreciated, as were making students aware of remedial and educational support services for help. Students expressed satisfaction with instructors they perceived as accessible and concerned. This satisfaction was correlated with faculty reported practices such as offering students support through referrals to remedial services and resources, providing feedback, and encouraging opportunities to interact and share ideas and experiences with others in the course.
Strategies shared by exemplary faculty as ways of providing effective feedback:
- Clearly expressing grading requirements through the use of matrices and rubrics to guide student work
- Responding to students as promptly as possible
- Providing students with individualized feedback
- Requesting students reply to grading feedback to ensure comprehension
- Using feedback to provide encouragement and referrals to services
- Developing FAQs to respond to recurring questions
- Discouraging lateness and encouraging promptness
- Following up with students who are not actively participating via email reminders.
While instructor feedback is essential for student progress, the impact of peer feedback cannot go unnoticed in online courses. Students can often synthesize and reteach the content to their peers, which enhances the learning process. Leveraging the power of student feedback not only offers the opportunity to spark deeper, innovative thoughts on assignments, but it also supports increased mastery of content.
As you advance in your use of online tools, you may want to explore other ways where you and your students can provide written, verbal, and/or video feedback in a presentation format. Peer feedback also heightens social presence in online environments because it provides an inclusive atmosphere where students are more apt to openly share and support one another.
https://youtu.be/DvnCFqgtiG8 (not sure)
