Timely Feedback and The Writing Assignment

One of the toughest things for any educator to do is leave timely feedback on writing. It becomes a tough choice between offering timely feedback and sleeping or eating for some. Reading student writing can be time-consuming, and often, it is difficult to give timely feedback due to the time it takes to collect and read the multitudes of essays. I've had students get research papers and essays back a month later, only to disregard my feedback because they've already moved on from an assignment. It's challenging, so there are a few ways around it..

There are a few ways to offer timely feedback which is one of the 5 Research-Based Tips for Providing Students with Meaningful Feedback​​ in this Edutopia article. First, is a suggestion Kelly Gallagher makes regarding offering feedback throughout the writing process involves mid-process feedback (though he too suffers from the wear and tear of reading papers):

Another way to speed up the feedback process is by tech-tooling the death out of it. I've posted about this before, but there are a few tools which have streamlined my essay feedback to a point that makes it manageable.

2. GoogleForEdu your essay process.- For me, this means essays are turned in as a Google Doc in Google Classroom. This allows me to speedily sort through them quickly, and it allows me to avoid hauling 80+ essays and papers to and from school in a satchel like a pack mule. Any LMS really works for this step, but using the Google Suite to collect and score essays has simplified a lot. A great plus is that students can easily share and peer edit using Docs as well, I can look at "Version History" under "File" on these documents to analyze feedback too.

2. Orange Slice your rubric. This add-on will read any rubric in the essay in table form in the Google Doc and allow you to score it in the same screen. I've got a Smore Newsletter that walks you through using this tool here. I've got screenshots of what it looks like, and I've included a step-by-step explanation and found YouTube screencast to help you set it up.

3. CheckMark your comments. This extension to Chrome comes with preloaded comments which you can also edit. It will simplify giving feedback on essays, and it will speed up your turn-around time. I've created a quick overview of the tool and included some information to get you started here.

The great thing about all these tools is that they don't just have to apply to grading of essays. Checkmark is great and works with Google Slides too, so it can be used to offer feedback on anything in slides. Orange Slice reads rubrics, so anything in Docs with a rubric added can benefit from the add-on.

As educators try to expand their knowledge of technology, content, and pedagogy, (TPACK) utilizing tools such as these can really impact the students in the classroom. Most of these involve knowledge of technology and content, but they can also assist in effective pedagogy, making it easier to provide a quick loop of feedback to students. As far as SAMR is concerned, these tools may modify your lessons, but they'll make even redefined lessons easier to score or offer feedback which might encourage educators to attempt knew things.

I've become a collector of ELA tech tools. If you have any other great tools to use to offer timely feedback on written work, I'd love to hear about them!