Feedback Session / Oral Assessment

Learning Objectives

1. Students will receive meaningful feedback that they can better understand compared to written feedback (because they can ask clarifying questions)
2. Students will receive actionable feedback that they can put to work for further writing assignments
3. Students will deepen their understanding of the issues discussed in their essay via probing questions from the instructor and, where appropriate, instructor-provided additional context and further reading recommendations
4. Students will articulate reasons for their writing choices, such as why they focused on one author rather than another, and may explain features of the essay the instructor has questions or provided feedback about, such as confusing sections, omissions, etc.

Overview

Students write a conventional 5-6 page essay about a prompt provided by the instructor relevant to the most recent unit of the course (there are three units). The essay is due one week after the end of the unit. 

At submission of the essay, students book a time for a meeting to discuss their essay via Calendly. (I set the slots for 20 minutes, though they usually go longer, with a 15 minute buffer beforehand so I can read the essay at that time. This enforces a finite window for reading, motivates the reading, and keeps the reading & feedback fresh). The instructor makes very large chunks of time available for the following two weeks for these meetings, and makes clear that no additional slots will be made available, to keep late submissions to a minimum. 

I have allowed the meetings to take place either in person or via Zoom at the student’s discretion, but I have developed a strong preference for in-person meetings to prevent distraction & standardize the assessment portion of the meeting. I will eliminate the Zoom option in future iterations without reason of sickness or being out of town. 

At the meeting, I first clarify that it is a feedback session for them to get meaningful, actionable feedback that they can understand, inviting questions along the way, and also an opportunity for me to probe their understanding of the course material. I then open the conversation by asking them to provide a brief summary of their response to the prompt, which should be conversational. The structure of the conversation then proceeds from global feedback toward more granular, then out again to ‘challenge’ questions which go beyond the strict confines of the essay to wider issues it raises. The final question is whether the feedback was clear, whether the student has any questions about it, or other questions, or whether they have anything else they’d like to say. 

Assessment of the meeting is rolled into the grade for the essay. After reading the essay, I assign it a provisional grade, which can go up or down based on the conversation. Did the student enrich it? Explain adequately shortcomings or confusing choices? Fail to be able to explain core ideas? The most common effect of the conversation is to improve the grade slightly, but sometimes students reveal very poor understanding of the material and this may reduce it.

Reflections

I deeply enjoy discussing ideas with students, so this exercise harmonizes with my vocational devotion to teaching. It is almost always an opportunity to deepen students’ understanding of both the material and their own processes of writing and thinking. 

The occasions when students show a poor understanding–even of their own writing, suggesting AI abuse in drafting the essay–make for uncomfortable conversations, as I allow confounded silences to linger and flailing students to twist in the breeze, a bit. 

I have had to discipline my own propensity to speak too much in these meetings, particularly when I like the essay or find certain elements thought-provoking or suggestive–as well as to fill the aforementioned silences. The brief window means instructors should try to make sure the student does the lion’s share of the speaking, to reach the learning objectives. Instructors jabbering on too much does not serve those purposes beyond the point of specific feedback or recommendations for improvements or further investigation. 

The meetings also provide an invaluable opportunity for the instructor to deepen their familiarity with the students themselves and, indeed, to establish a rapport with them, particularly those who speak less in class. One always discovers impressive thinking among these students, which the instructor might then draw upon later in class. The rapport established is especially useful in this regard, as it helps make those quieter students more comfortable.

Tools

None; but this assignment responds to the challenge of assessing learning when students can easily use LLMs to generate written work.