This blog post will concentrate on two new assessment functionalities, which are small in themselves but offer a creative opportunity to rethink how we connect students with their feedback.
Annotation assessment type
The first is a new assignment type that allows your students to analyse and annotate a document uploaded by you. Academics researching the effectiveness of feedback discuss the importance of ‘feedback literacy’ which is basically the students’ ability to understand and use their feedback. Not all students arrive ‘feedback literate’ and there is a need to develop this understanding through the design of scaffolded activities that develop towards greater independence, resilience and utility of feedback. The annotate assessment type offers a useful formative or summative activity to help address this. Here are a few ideas on how to use this in practice;
- Annotating sections or examples of previously submitted work, allowing students to develop skills to identify mistakes and offer advice on improvements.
- Annotating sections of academic papers to see if students can de-codify the different elements and highlight them, and provide a commentary on the subtext of the paper.
- In profession-based subjects, student could annotate a document connected with the profession, and simulate an editorial role by checking the details. This could provide them with an elevated feeling of authority in identifying mistakes or suggesting improvements, it can also connect them with developing professional skills. E.g. lawyers checking legal documents, management check project proposals.
- Make this annotation process part of the programme’s academic skills module.
- Follow up activities could include an in class discussion on the similarities and differences between their comments, and their perspectives on the experience
The system also allows the tutor to grade this activity or even provide follow-up comments in answer to some of the comments raised creating a dialogue around feedback.
More information on the annotation assessment type
Reassignment
This leads us to the second functionality recently introduced by Canvas, Assignment Reassignment. This allows you to rerelease an assignment that a student has already submitted where tutor comments have already been created. The term feedforward is perhaps over-used, but academics researching in the area of feedback consistently find that students receiving feedback during the process of developing their ideas find it more useful than feedback at the end of the module. Thinking about feedback as an ongoing conversation can help students identify the issues, address them, and gain greater awareness of their own development. The reassignment tool allows tutors to receive early drafts provide comments and then reassign them back to the student for them to use those comments to make improvements. Here are a few ideas;
- Reward students for their ability to use your feedback as part of the assessment design and marking process.
- Develop the process as a working log of the development of project work, commenting on each stage and reassigning for each iteration.
These two new functionalities as well as others offer an opportunity to build greater feedback literacy. It offers students the opportunity to take on more responsibility and ownership of their feedback; leading to greater independence.
More information on reassignment
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dr Ian Sadler (LJMU) for providing ideas and connecting these tools with research and practice. Thanks to Dr David Carless (University of Sussex) for suggesting key reading in this area.
References
Winstone, N.E., Carless, D., 2021. Who is feedback for? The influence of accountability and quality assurance agendas on the enactment of feedback processes. Assess. Educ. Princ. Policy Pract. 0, 1–18.