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Feedback: 5 documents, 3 audiences

By Steve Draper,   Department of Psychology,   University of Glasgow.

A note on the 5 documents to write feedback comments on and the 3 audiences the written feedback it goes to

This note may not altogether belong here, but is a generalisation triggered by the previous more relevant point. The general point that applies to feedback in general, but which is completely absent from the literature apart from an unpublished paper I'm not allowed to give you by Beryl Plimmer, is that when a marker (say me) is marking, I am in fact writing 5 different things (on 5 different documents) to 3 audiences: and part of what makes marking a chore, is that no software supports this, and I need a big table area to use as a desk with 4 bits of paper to write on plus the essay/work I am marking. For, say, an essay (but it's much the same when I review a journal paper, or as Plimmer shows, when someone marks a computer program exercise) these are:
  1. My private notes to myself on what I think about this bit of work. This is partly to sort out my thoughts, but I also need to keep them in case there are later discussions with second markers etc. in which I need to remember my justification for giving the mark I do.
  2. Quite often, another sheet for private thoughts triggered by the work, for use later on in advancing my own understanding of the area. I.e. what this student or author has taught me, or made me think about. This could be included in the first document: in both cases the audience is myself; however the later use is different so really I need them filed in different places, and so in two different documents.
  3. A sheet on which I write feedback comments to the student. This will at best be a subset of the first: filtered to remove abuse, add constructive suggestions about how to improve it, and perhaps selected if I think it better to communicate only the most important points rather than flood them with too many. Filtered in quantity too because one root mistake by the learner usually leads to many surface symptoms: but telling them the root cause is more useful to them.
  4. The script itself to write on. Some low level comments e.g. spelling errors are just much better done on the script: it's a pain for both me and the author to read a description of the error and where it is on another sheet of paper: direct mark-up is MUCH better. But more general comments need to be on a separate sheet (the point above): for legibility, and because they often do not have one position they belong in. E.g. "you don't make very clear which points are your own as opposed to being repeated from the literature. You could either flag this more clearly at each one, or else use the conclusion to list 'my comments' as a summary list." All this applies also to marking computer programs, physics problem solutions etc. Tactics usually need to be marked-up on the script; strategy comments put on a separate sheet.
  5. A sheet on which I record the marks, to be sent into the admin. machinery.

As I said, this is derived from the task analysis Beryl Plimmer did in designing her "Penmarked" digital ink software.

References

Merry, S. & Orsmond, P. (2008) Bioscience Education e-journal 11-3 "Students' Attitudes to and Usage of Academic Feedback Provided via Audio Files" http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol11/beej-11-3.aspx

Merry, S. & Orsmond, P. (2007) In: Proceedings of the Science Teaching and Learning Conference 2007, Chin, P., Clark, K., Doyle, S., Goodhew, P., Madden, T., Meskin, S., Overton, T. & Wilson, J. (eds) pp 100-104. The Higher Education Academy: York. ISBN 978-1-905788-39-2. "Students' Responses to Academic Feedback Provided via mp3 Audio Files"

Plimmer,Beryl & Apperley,M.D. (2007) "Making paperless work" CHINZ '07 Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCHI New Zealand chapter's international conference on Computer-human interaction: design centered HCI 2007: pp.1-8

Plimmer,B. & Mason,P. (2006) "A pen-based paperless environment for annotating and marking student assignments" PROC.7TH AUSTRALASIAN USER INTERFACE CONFERENCE, CRPIT PRESS pp.37-44 http://crpit.com/confpapers/CRPITV50Plimmer.pdf

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