EdTech

Principle #4: Give Prompt Feedback

Knowing what you know and don’t know focuses learning. Students need appropriate feedback on performance to benefit from courses. When getting started, students need help in assessing existing knowledge and competence. In synchronous classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement. At various points during college, and at the end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how to assess themselves. Be sure your syllabus clearly states your response time for providing feedback and grades.*

	Pedagogy	Implementation
1	Use quiz question types can that be automatically scored.	Canvas Quizzes can automatically grade most question types, including fill-in-the-blanks (Cloze) and short answer using wildcards. They also have the option to give feedback on both wrong and right answers.
2	Provide for practice quizzes.	Quizzes can be configured as practice quizzes by setting every question points to zero and allowing multiple retries.
3	Grading online means the student can get their grades and feedback as soon as you’re done, instead of having to wait until the next F2F class period.	Our online gradebook help is on the Faculty Quickstart Page, which also lists ways to get help.
4	Grade assignments promptly. Using online grading tools and rubrics may make this quicker.*	In Canvas Assignments and graded Discussions, use SpeedGrader to report grades and feedback to students as soon as they are graded. Using Rubrics in Canvas is a good way to communicate to students what you're looking for and how you are grading them. Note also that Saint Mary's College is beginning to make more use of Outcomes as well as rubrics.
5	Grade Discussion assignments promptly.	For graded Discussions, use SpeedGrader, which can show you each students' threads, including first post and any responses to others.
6	Use voice grading. Students like this feature, and hearing your voice is much more personal than red ink.	Speed Grader, for both Assignment and Discussions, supports simple voice grading, where you get one audio recording per paper. Consider more advanced forms of voice grading, such as embedding audio files into specific points in the paper, or video capturing your screen as you digitally annotate the paper. SMC professors Barry Eckhouse and Rebecca Carroll published a paper on the topic.