Incorporating Student Feedback

I found the Open Pedagogy Fellowship and the incorporation of student reviewers into the creation of classroom materials invigorating. Over the last two years, I have asked students in my HIST 1000 classes to write articles on a public website with the intent that the site would then be used and expanded by future students. So I was familiar with the idea of asking students to produce learning material, but I was not aware that this practice was just a small slice of a much larger pedagogical space called Open Pedagogy. The realization that there was a robust literature, spaces to share ideas, and whole communities of faculty willing to experiment and collaborate was both validating and taught me how much I still have to learn. The discovery of this wider pedagogical movement has definitely led me to be more ambitious with my own thinking.

For my summer project I wanted to develop two sets of assignment prompts, one that would lead students to develop a personal statement about why the study of history matters to them, and a second set that would guide students to create videos that would teach future students a range of skills, from evaluating the quality of a website to essential techniques for analyzing primary sources. The hope is that then future students could watch these videos produced by their peers and learn from them (and perhaps then create even better videos!). Eventually I would like both the personal statements and the videos to live on this site.

I got some very valuable feedback from the students. Some of it showed me how hard it is to describe an assignment out of context! Typically an assignment is given to students who have met you, been a part of your class, and have learned some important skills as well as your expectations. When writing an assignment it is very difficult not to assume that your reader is in the same place as that hypothetical student.

Some of the student feedback revealed anxiety that I expected, for example with expectations for group work and how to be sure that each member is contributing equally and whether new technologies would be taught in sufficient depth. Clearly some student have had experiences where instructors have assumed knowledge of technology that students did not possess. I think the concept of ‘digital native’ has done students no favors because it has encouraged teachers to assume that students are fluent with any technology put in front of them.

Some other pieces of feedback were less expected. Several student reviewers mentioned how much they liked knowing the explicit purpose and goal of the assignment up front, no surprises! While the assignments I developed over the summer do not contain surprises, some of the game-based lessons that I sometimes use absolutely do. I may need to think more about how to communicate the learning purpose of a game while still preserving the necessary secrecy to make the game really work.

Another comment I need to think more about is the option to remain anonymous when writing for a public audience. Both of my new assignments ask students to put material onto a website, and some student reviewers said they would be more comfortable if they could post their material without their name attached. Students in my previous classes had not requested this, but perhaps they privately would have liked that option. On the other hand, I think it is motivating for a student to produce their best work when they know it will be out there for others to see. Writing for a large audience is more authentic than just writing for me as the instructor. Is that still true if the author remains anonymous? It might, but it is clearly an issue I need to think and read more about. These comments about anonymity, however, highlighted for me the value of the student review process this summer. Students who were already in my class (and thus perhaps already anxious about their future grade) may have been reluctant to share that kind of feedback. I hope that student review of faculty materials can become a more regular feature of teaching at the University of New Haven.