Welcome to Digital Dialogues!

Here is your brief weekly newsletter about online teaching and learning from Ann and Becky! We plan to support you through newsletters, virtual consultations, resources and more! In this newsletter, we provide some teaching tips about online feedback that you can apply in your classes. We also connect you to some curated as you journey online.

Teaching Tip

Feedback in Online Learning

By this point, you have probably given electronic feedback to students in the discussion board threads, on assignments, group projects, or in email. How did it go? I remember the first time I learned how to grade in Blackboard. I thought I was doing great and then realized I didn’t “submit” my feedback and none of it saved! Hopefully you are doing much better than I did.

Feedback plays an essential role in students learning despite the educational environment. However, in online learning, it also presents an opportunity to connect and relate to your students in addition to nurturing their academic growth. This time in the semester is when many assignments are due and rough drafts of final projects roll in. As you provide student feedback in our online learning environment, think about the opportunity you have to connect with this student one on one beyond the learning objectives of the assignment. Also, think about their stress levels and the limited amount of information they will be able to process and apply to future learning. It is always good practice to be positive, specific, brief, and timely in our feedback, but even more important during COVID 19 as our level of tolerance for additional stress and capacity to learn new things is low.

·       Positive: Start and end with a personal comment, connection, or bit of information that is individualized to the student and positive.

·       Specific: Make your feedback specific to the purpose of the assignment, to that individual student, and to exactly what needs improvement.

·       Brief: Limit constructive feedback to no more than 3 things! Seriously, prioritize what the student needs to improve on for this class to meet objectives and leave the rest (or include it in the generalized feedback to the whole class as others probably have similar errors).

·       Timely: Feedback in online learning is best received when given in a timely manner, this is true for student assignment questions as well. The quicker you provide feedback, the more likely the student is to engage with that feedback and apply it.

For generalized information about providing student feedback, please read this article: How to Give Your Students Better Feedback with Technology

Try this to build connections during feedback!

• Remind students where to look for feedback in Blackboard and how you will provide feedback online, especially if you graded on paper before going online.
• Use students’ names in the comments section in Blackboard or in whatever feedback you are providing. Use it at the beginning and then end of the feedback given.
• During the Quarantine, use feedback to check in on each student personally by asking them how they are before giving the pertinent feedback.
• Create a video for the class giving “generalized” feedback addressing common errors and successes of the assignments.
• Create an announcement when you are done with grading and providing feedback so students know to go in and look for it!
• Send a picture of yourself grading their assignments and let them know you are thinking about them.

Resources

Accessibility: Izzy is still available to help make accessible resources available online.  In order to create accessible chapters please download the Office Lens app, take pictures of the pages you need, and email them to Izzy. Please allow a one-week turnaround time, and provide brief descriptions for any pictures, graphs, or tables and explain why they are important.  Please email for more details or with any questions: [email protected].  Thanks for supporting us, Izzy!

Teaching Online Brown Bag: The CTLD at MSU Denver is offering weekly sessions to support online instruction. These sessions will be on Teams at noon on the following dates.  Feel free check the CTLD calendar and sign up for one or more sessions!

April 9th: Providing High Quality Feedback in Online Courses – Ann Obermann

April 14th: Engaging Activities to Do in Your Synchronous Sessions – Becky Cottrell

April 20th: Moving your Final Assessment Online- Samuel Jay

April 28th: Wrapping up the Semester and Moving Forward

MSU Denver Ready: This site helps with the basics of going online during COVID 19. It has lots of helpful information and connections with other MSU Denver supports.

The Center for Teaching Learning and Design (CTLD) offers many trainings and support for online instructors. Please visit their events calendar for more details.