As instructors you spend plenty of time grading student papers, marking exams, and evaluating projects. However, it’s often the case that students don’t see this valuable feedback, but not because they don’t want to. Many times they just don’t know where to find it. And Blackboard doesn’t help in this regard because the way it is designed makes it difficult for students to access the feedback.
In this post I’ll offer a few suggestions to help students access and absorb your feedback.
Grade in a timely manner
The first way to help students get the most out of feedback is to turn around assignments and assessments in a timely fashion. Of course, the time frame will depend on the type of feedback you provide, the detail of the feedback, and the size of the class. But the sooner you show students how they are doing the bigger the impact will be on their learning.
Send a Feedback Announcement
Next, communicate to your students that you have graded their most recent work and that the feedback is available for them. Many students don’t visit your Blackboard course daily and Blackboard has a very poor notification setup, so the only way they will know that they have feedback waiting for them is if you tell them. Try sending an announcement out after you have graded their work so that they know your feedback is available.
Show Students how to Access Feedback
Finally, students often see the grade received on an assignment and think that is the only type of feedback that is available to them, which doesn’t tell them very much, especially on assignments that are closer to the top of Bloom’s taxonomy. So telling them that they have feedback available and where that feedback can be found is crucial to them engaging with it. Here are two short videos I made that demonstrate the ways that students view feedback on Blackboard assignments and Turnitin assignments.
Also, we have put together a tutorial on the various ways that students can access instructor feedback on tests, even after the due date has passed and the test is closed.
How Students Review Test Results
Hopefully these tips help your students engage more with your feedback. Let us know what you have done to get students to engage with your feedback in the comments below.
