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Utilizing the Power of Feedback

By Eric Peloza
April 19, 2021

Feedback is a crucial part of the online experience for students and instructors. It is valuable for a number of reasons, one being that it allows instructors to connect to students and help students grow their skill set. This blog post will look at the importance of feedback and how you can leverage it in your courses.

Let’s unpack feedback!

Does feedback matter?

Instructor Sharon Frazier, Healthcare Administration

As we know from student feedback and research, instructor feedback is a priority for students in an online course. It has also been shown to have a direct impact on students’ perceived satisfaction with online courses. A study from an online nursing program showed that a lack of feedback caused students to be unsatisfied with their online learning experience (Soon, Sook, Jung, & Im, 2000). Additionally, we have heard from our students through surveys and student success coaches that they appreciate quality instructor feedback.

One of our Healthcare Administration students had this to say about the great feedback her instructor, Sharon Frazier, provided: “Overall, things have been going well. Getting constant guidance from Professor has been helpful in understanding the assignments and expectations for HCA 700. I find myself learning a lot through the discussions. She also provides a lot of feedback which is incredibly helpful.”

Getting constant guidance from Professor has been helpful in understanding the assignments and expectations…She also provides a lot of feedback which is incredibly helpful

What do students want from their online instructor?

Studies show that students feel affirmed, challenged, and influenced when they receive quality feedback from exemplary instructors (Edwards, Perry, & Janzen, 2011). Students also report frustrations with inadequate feedback and a lack of depth in another study (Lai, 2006). When you provide thoughtful feedback, it shows students that their instructor is invested in their learning. Students may have invested a lot of time and energy into an assignment, so putting the same effort into giving good feedback reassures and motivates them.

Finding the correct tool to meet the feedback requirement

How to use the tools in Canvas to maximize your feedback

In online learning, providing effective feedback is facilitated by the tools in the learning management system or digital learning environment. Effective feedback is frequent or immediate, specific, or interrogative (Leibold & Schwarz, 2015). Our digital learning environment, Canvas, enables faculty to easily give feedback with these characteristics.

If you’re looking to provide feedback in Canvas, consider one of these tools:

  • Announcements: Announcements are a quick and great way to communicate to the entire class at once, such as when you notice a running theme when grading and want to point it out. You can also use them to prepare students for the next stage in the course.
  • Rubrics: The Canvas rubrics tool gives you the ability to use pre-built feedback and personalized feedback. You can use the pre-built feedback to quickly assess the main criteria of an assessment. It also gives you the ability to justify your grading with the differing levels of criteria assessment. The rubrics tool also has an area that allows you to provide context and commentary regarding your grading.

    Example of using feedback in Canvas Quizzes
  • Quizzes: The Canvas quizzes tool allows you to give feedback on quiz questions based upon the correct answer, incorrect answers, or for specific selections. You can create this feedback before the course opens, and students can receive it immediately after submitting their quiz. The advantage of this option is that you only need to write feedback once and it applies to every student attempt.

Canvas also has a great analytics tool that allows you to view student performance at the class-level. You can interpret the data and identify common threads from the reporting then use this information to provide additional feedback on specific content areas that have lower than expected performance. You can also leverage announcements to share content with students right when they need it!

If you’re looking to learn more about feedback and other related topics, you can review our Journey to Online self-guided courses! In our Teaching course, the following modules address feedback:

  • Developing Your Online Course – This module explores the ideas behind creating effective, feedback-drive, rubrics for your students and yourself
  • Teaching Your Online Course – This module has great information and advice on how you can best provide valuable feedback

If you learned something new or would like to suggest future topics for us to dig into, leave a comment below! We’d love to hear from you.

References

Edwards, M., Perry, B., & Janzen, K. (2011). The making of an exemplary online educator. Distance Education, 32(1), 101-118.

Lai, H. J. (2006). On-line courses: Recommendations for teachers. Academic Exchange Quarterly, 10(4), 50-55.
Leibold, N., & Schwarz, L. M. (2015). The Art of Giving Online Feedback. Journal of Effective Teaching, 15(1), 34-46.

Soon, K. H., Sook, K. I., Jung, C. W., & Im, K. M. (2000). The effects of internet-based distance learning in nursing. Computers in Nursing, 18(1), 19-25.

Faculty Spotlight: Diane Caporale Interview

By Eric Peloza
October 22, 2020

Diane working in her lab with a student. Image Source: https://stevenspoint.news/2019/05/24/dna-research-paves-career-path-to-marshfield-lab-for-uw-stevens-point-students/

As you know, the higher education field had to rapidly shift toward remote (online) learning in 2020 given the COVID-19 pandemic. These are challenging times for all in the workplace, especially for faculty trying to transfer their face-to-face courses to the online format or for faculty who had to transfer in Spring 2020. Luckily, many of the faculty we partner with had the advantage of designing, developing, and teaching online courses with UW Extended Campus, either currently or in the past. You probably felt more comfortable with the switch to online learning at your home campus because of this experience with UW Extended Campus Collaborative programs.

I recently spoke with Dr. Diane Caporale from UW–Stevens Point. As an academic director and faculty member for the UW Applied Biotechnology (ABT) program, Diane was introduced to online learning from her involvement with the ABT program. For this newsletter’s faculty spotlight, we talked about what she gained from working through the online course design and development process as a faculty member and by collaborating with other campuses as an academic director.

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Course Changes: Out With the Old, In With The New

By Kristin Kowal
February 27, 2020

Spring is upon us and growth and change is a fitting topic to explore this time of year. Here are four changes we saw in courses that we’d love to share with you, as well as the instructor’s perspective on these changes.

Adding Choice to Invigorate a Boring Assignment

Course: Introduction to Sociology, UW Flexible Option

Old: Students reviewed graphical U.S. census data and compared racial and ethnic populations over time.

New: Students can choose to conduct research on stratification or attend and analyze a community experience through the lens of race and ethnicity, gender, or social class.

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Mid-Course Surveys: Asking Students How Your Course is Working

By Amy Lane

Diverse group of students holding signs that say "survey".
Mid-course surveys capture formative feedback from students.

Mid-Course Surveys

Now that you are midway through a course, how would you say your course is going for students?  Do students have suggestions that could be incorporated to make it a better experience for current and future students? Rather than waiting until the end of the course for feedback, instructors can ask for formative feedback from students midway through a course.

Although it may be hard to ask for feedback, the fact that you are asking shows how much you care about your students. The mid-course feedback is a way for instructors and students to share and respond to formative feedback, which can improve a course that is in progress and have a positive impact on learning now and in the future.

How to Design Questions

It is easy to create and set up a mid-course survey in Canvas. The survey should be anonymous (Canvas has a setting for anonymous responses) and can be as short as three short answer questions.

To motive students to provide feedback, it is important to emphasize in the survey’s instructions that student feedback is valuable and will be used to improve current and future learning experiences. If you would like to ask students for formative feedback, please contact your instructional designer for help in setting up a survey in your course.

Example of formative feedback survey questions:

  1. What is one significant insight you have gained thus far in this course?
  2. What is one question about this course’s subjects that you still have?
  3. Please give your instructor one or two specific, practical suggestions of how they could help you improve your learning in this course.

Benefits of Conducting Mid-Course Surveys

There are several benefits to asking students for feedback in a mid-course survey:

  • By asking open-ended questions during the course, instructors can show that they are interested and open to students’ feedback, which can help motivate students.
  • The survey gathers the overall student perspective and gives the instructor time to respond to constructive feedback that can be implemented in the last half of the course.
  • The instructor can serve as a good role model for students by constructively responding to both positive and negative feedback.
  • Some students will be more receptive to formative feedback because they will see that the instructor is open to feedback as well.
  • Responding to feedback acknowledges the students that provided feedback and manages student expectations for the remainder of the course.
  • Instructors demonstrate that student feedback is valued with their willingness to incorporate recommended changes into the course and explain procedures or policies that may be confusing to students.

Tips for Follow-Up

After you ask students to complete the mid-course survey, it is important to respond to the formative feedback that you receive from students; we suggest that instructors respond by the end of the next week. Carefully consider what students say and look for themes that you can categorize their suggestions into for follow-up, such as:

  • Items you can change during the semester and when you will make the changes.
  • Suggestions that need to wait until the next time the course is revised because of the impact on the remaining instruction in the course.
  • The aspects that you either cannot or will not change because of instructional reasons (e.g. assessments).

Talk to your instructional designer about creating a mid-course survey today!

Resources

Faculty Spotlight: Rich Freese Interview

By Eric Peloza

Course revisions are an exciting time in the life cycle of a course. Faculty reflect upon the past offerings and look for ways to improve the student experience. I recently talked with Dr. Rich Freese (DMA) about how he approaches the revision process. Rich facilitates courses for our UW Independent Learning program and I’ve worked with him on a course revision (U660206 – Legendary Performers) that won the 2018 ADEIL College-level course award. For this issue of IDigest, we talk about Rich’s secret sauce for cooking up award-winning course revisions.

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