This is the third part of the Rethinking Online Discussion Boards series, focusing on ways to develop dialogue and belonging in online environments. In this final post, I look at how feedback also depends on humanizing elements to be effective.
Numerous challenges complicate feedback in online environments. Here are two: Providing good feedback takes time, yet feedback in online classes is time-sensitive. Feedback is essential because it offers students information about their performance so they can adjust their progress. Yet, in online courses, students have trouble trusting feedback because it comes from an instructor they’ve likely never met and classmates who they wouldn’t recognize in their next face-to-face course, which brings us to a third challenge. The work of Moore and others suggests that the greater the distance between the student and others in the course, the more need for both structure and human interaction through dialogue.
In face-to-face courses with closer proximity to students, we offer feedback all the time:
- During a discussion, we might elaborate on a student’s idea, connecting it to a theory or the previous week’s material.
- During a small group activity, we might guide a group toward a different technique.
- At break, we might take a student aside to discuss their attitude toward others in the group.
Each encounter offers feedback to help students engage productively in their learning. Each is also personal, time-sensitive, and meaningful within a specific context.
Yet asynchronous courses, by their nature, offer few of these in-the-moment opportunities. Discussions, usually key opportunities for feedback, become “remarkably incoherent” online, as Hickey and Harris (2021) explain. This lack of coherence makes online forums “hard-pressed to support the more efficient just-in-time whole-class educator feedback that can emerge quite naturally from synchronous classroom[s]” (304).
Moreover, timing and context cannot be predicted. There’s no way to know how soon (or if) students will read comments or how they will interpret feedback from someone they may have never met for an assignment that they may no longer remember.
To provide meaningful feedback that students accept and use, then, we need to start well before we add comments to Canvas. We need to start with relationships.
Developing Trust as a Foundation for Feedback
How much we use feedback depends on how trustworthy we find its source. In an online course, faculty can build credibility by showing students our interest in their success. Two ways to develop trust include:
- Inviting students’ input. You can augment an existing syllabus questionnaire with a few questions about students’ backgrounds or anticipated needs. Using a midsemester feedback tool, you can ask something like, “What 1-3 adjustments do you suggest to support your learning and/or motivation as we move ahead in the semester?” Student results provide us with actionable feedback, and the survey gives students evidence that their instructor cares about their learning.
- Showing your ethos of care. Try the “Message Students Who” feature. After a grading/response session, I try to take an extra minute to message students who have not submitted. All it takes is a right click and a single message. Canvas sends it out individually to everyone who didn’t submit it. Early on, my message tells students that I’ll extend the due date because they’re still getting used to the workload. Later, I invite them to reach out if they’re falling behind. In both cases, a high percentage replied appreciatively. I’m hopeful that it shows students that I care about their success.
Getting into the “Room Where it Happens.”
Assuming trust is developed, questions remain: do students read the comments? Do they understand what we meant? Although we cannot physically be in the room, there are other ways to add context:
- Using tools like exam wrappers. Georgia Van Tyne’s handy blog, Quick Strategies to Digitally Pulse Check Your Students, ends with a strategy that enables a digital check-in after an exam. My exam wrappers begin by asking the student’s approach, their sense of the outcome, and how prepared they felt by the course. From there, I move to a “feedback wrapper” question: “What was your takeaway from the rubric and my grading comments on your essay? What felt useful and fair? What suggestions do you have, or what else would you have appreciated hearing about?” To answer, students must read and reflect on their feedback. It also gives students another opening for dialogue.
- Personalizing feedback. Steele and Holbeck (2018) argue, “Personalization is the key driver for giving students feedback in a more conversational and personable tone that makes the content more accepting and constructive.” They suggest including students’ names in the comments, writing in the first or second person, and using tools like audio or video recording (studies suggest that verbal feedback appears to be particularly well received). Although time constraints might limit the number of recordings you can make, Canvas does support multimedia feedback, as does VoiceThread. Steele and Holbeck stress that it isn’t all or nothing: “Any level of personalization that an instructor can add to their feedback helps.”
That last comment is reassuring because time and energy are so limited these days. Save time-consuming feedback for assignments that require a depth of thinking or where a course correction is needed. And remember that with discussion boards, students can do the work of providing feedback, though their responses may be more rote than we’d like. Recently, I’ve been giving group feedback in which I highlight a few thoughtful student comments. I also explicitly encourage direct response: “If someone responded to you, that’s great! Write back to them. Lots of times, people are asking each other questions, but the author never goes back to see it.” The more I cheerlead for dialogue and explain what I’m looking for, the better it gets.
Giving feedback during distance learning is tough. We can’t do it all, but it’s better to do something than nothing, to bridge the “distance” and get closer to learning.
