Episode 20-Accessible Feedback
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:33 Welcome to episode twenty. In this episode, I’ve been thinking a lot about feedback with some of my colleagues and I wanted to think about what accessible feedback could look like. This is in some ways a bit of an extension of some of the things that I talked about in episode 16 when we were talking about accessible mentorship, but I want to focus on the accessibility of the feedback that we’re providing in classroom spaces.
0:59 So some of Nicol’s work on feedback practices which I will link to, on the episode page, will be important here. But I don’t want to go through each of the feedback practices that is noted in Nicol’s work because I think there’s a real opportunity to just really hone in and focus on some of the ideas and the accessibility implications of them, when it comes to feedback practices. So I’m going to try to focus on four because that’ll again help make this a bit more manageable in terms of what to think about, but I’m definitely open to other suggestions or even reflections that come from this episode.
1:37 So the first thing I want to talk about in terms of how to make feedback more accessible is about being specific. When we talk about how important it is for feedback, we say it’s really important for that feedback to be specific, and from an accessibility point of view that is also of course very important. When we give more generalized feedback and guidance about like well grammar and spelling needs to be reviewed throughout, we’re not giving them something constructive or actionable, right? They don’t, that seems like a big ask, right, like look at all the grammar and spelling, yes, but if you could make that a little bit more constructive and actionable right, it doesn’t feel as overwhelming. The way to make that even more specific is to highlight some the examples of what needs to be reviewed, like sentence structure, is it word choice? That way the learner really knows what to focus on. Right? So that specificity is going to help with that overwhelm, and it’s going to make that feedback aspect at least a little bit more accessible.
2:39 Second, and this is a big discussion point in terms of accessibility, tone. So there’s a lot of talk about how we frame feedback in terms of you did this versus the paper did this, right? Like the paper wasn’t an entity or like the paper is an entity that exists outside of the person who wrote it. I can totally see both sides of this. But what I want to focus on here is what, the point is that, some people really just don’t do well in deciphering tone and what that tone can say, can say much more to the learner in fact, than the actual feedback itself. And I’ll elaborate this on my next point when I talk about communication with learners, but we often don’t know how our tone is being perceived to the learners in our feedback and when they receive that feedback. So not only do we need to be as specific as possible, as I was mentioning before, in terms of giving actionable steps that can be done, but we need to reflect on how we are expressing this to learners, right? Like what is our tone saying? Is it, does it align to who we feel we are as you know as teaching and learning folk, as pedagogues, as critical thinkers, those kinds of things. Does our tone, does the tone model who we are in terms of our values and beliefs when it comes to teaching and learning?
4:07 And this goes to point three which is accessible feedback is often given in a modality of choice and it’s part of feedback-on-feedback loop. So at the beginning of term, many folk will do a survey or questionnaire to help the teaching team know the learners better, right? So part of that survey can be a question about how they wish to best receive feedback and what feedback seems the most meaningful to them. So many of us have learning management systems that allow us to give feedback as text, to mark up documents that have been submitted in different ways, but also to give video and audio feedback with transcripts. Some learners really engage with feedback in a more meaningful and different way if it’s given in audio as opposed to if it is just given textually. Sometimes having the feedback on the learning management system, but also having the opportunity to talk to their instructor about that feedback or part of the teaching team, so the TAs for example, about that feedback can really support the edits and the changes that are suggested.
5:14 But also part of this is the need for a feedback-on-feedback loop. So what that means is allowing learners to tell you if the feedback that you have provided has been helpful, useful, or meaningful to them and what they would like to see instead if not. I’m also very aware that some of you who teach large courses will say that this type of individualization does not scale and cannot be done if you’re teaching like 200 students with little teaching assistant support. And I understand absolutely what you’re saying, as someone who used to teach a 100-student class with no TAs. What I’m suggesting here though, can often be put in place in a workflow in a way that makes sense, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be done for each assignment. Maybe you give comments on a shorter piece, but for the longer essay or report you do a 30-second audio clip. Right? There are a lot of different tools that are part of institutional ed tech toolkits, right, that can help with that as well. And if you have a teaching and learning centre or a group of educational technologists on your campus, I would really suggest that you speak them because they can probably help with that feedback workflow, especially if you’re teaching large courses.
6:27 (Four)The last part of accessible feedback that I want to talk about is the often discussed need for feedback to be timely. So this again is something that comes up in terms of the accessibility because it’s something that’s important both for the teaching team and the learners, right. And I want to think about this really holistically. So this isn’t, you know, thinking about how do we do accessible feedback only for learners, I want to think about how do we do accessible feedback, but also taking into account the teaching team, right. So the best feedback that you can provide as a member of a teaching team is when you have time to devote to give that feedback right? If you’re on a deadline to get essays graded and comments back, this is when the feedback becomes less useful, less specific. And so then the question becomes what will the learners be able to do with that feedback at that particular point in time? If the feedback that’s being provided is part of a carefully and intentionally scaffolded assessment strategy then absolutely that feedback needs to happen early and often so that the final artifact that the learner is producing is based on a reflective ability to respond to that feedback.
7:40 However, what happens if the feedback is on a final paper? A lot of people will say well course is over they don’t need to even need to give feedback. But if we want to think about and get into the frame of mind of thinking about sustainability of the work that we do and the work that we assign for your courses, and that these assignments are part of greater sort of program learning outcomes, part of greater community ethics and skills that we want them to build, then with that in mind what should feedback look like at that moment? Context is so important here. Is the student going to use that topic in their graduate studies, for example? Then feedback would need to be given, but maybe you don’t need to give it right at the end of the year, maybe you end up doing a one on one later in the term, right.
8:26 Ultimately feedback needs to be given at a time when it would be at the most use for the learner, but also at a time when the instructor can provide it. I feel we often talk about feedback in one way, as instructors giving it to learners, but in order for that feedback to be meaningful, and also accessible, it has to be given by someone who feels that they are in a space to truly engage with the work that’s in front of them. So I guess what I’m trying to leave you with here is that accessible feedback involves both the access needs of the learner, but also the access needs of the instructor too.
9:05 So that’s it, that’s episode 20 of Accessagogy, with a discussion on how to make feedback more accessible, or at least many questions that we can think about when we’re giving feedback in order to make it more accessible.
9:17 Remember as well that I also want this to be a space where you can ask questions and share concepts that you would like me to discuss. So if there’s anything that I mentioned here, that you would like me to clarify, please ask.
9:27 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you would like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I will try to include as many suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 20 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a great week!