timely feedback to students

I used to bust my ass to get graded papers back to students by the next class period. When I first started teaching, I taught MWF classes, so if students turned in papers on a Wednesday, they got them back on Friday. That was when I was in grad school and only teaching one class at a time. Later, when I was adjuncting and teaching 6-8 classes a semester, I always got papers back the next class period after a weekend, so if students in a TR class turned in papers on a Tuesday or Thursday, they would get them back the following Tuesday. Later still, when I got a full-time faculty position and had to accommodate committee work and other service obligations, I gave myself a full week to comment on and return student work. When I started working on my dissertation (on top of teaching, committee work, and other service), I found that I sometimes took up to a week and a half to return work.

Two observations related to all this:

1. I recently hit a new low, and with no excuse (dissertation is done, teaching load isn’t extreme, committee work is manageable): I took two full weeks to return the last set of portfolios I collected. I could use the fact that I was piloting audio comments with that batch of portfolios as an excuse, but I have to admit that I did a fair amount of good old-fashioned procrastinating, too.
2. In my student evaluations, my score for “gives feedback to assignments in a timely fashion” has actually gone up. I was always mystified when students said I didn’t give feedback in a timely fashion when I always returned assignments during the next class meeting—I mean, how could I have gotten them feedback any faster? Did they want me to call them with feedback the next day? But I do think it’s interesting that when I started taking a week and a half instead of a week, my score in that area actually went up. Have students become more generous in scoring this area? Do they not realize how long I’m actually taking? Maybe they are comparing me to other faculty members who collect work and never return it (sadly, I’ve heard from many students about instructors who never actually return their work to them, or give all their assignments back at once at the end of the semester).

In any case, as I’ve said before, I enjoy responding to student work and put a lot of effort into giving my students feedback I think they can use, but I find it exhausting. Taking two weeks to give the feedback doesn’t mean the students get better feedback, it simply means I needed more breaks between papers to refocus and reenergize.

tags: audio_commentary  teaching  technology  

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