I feel that feedback for this course has been challenging for my peers and I. I feel that I have met the objective in terms of feedback, but I would also like to add my opinions on how it felt to give feedback, and things that I feel could improve the process in general.
The feedback that I gave met all of the requirements. I answered all of the questions in the rubric, gave positives and negatives about what did or did not go well, and I put myself (as ‘I’) in all of my statements so that my feedback was opinion-based.
To serve as an example, here is the feedback that I provided to Narmada for her first microteaching on Web 2.0.
I feel that giving feedback for these projects was just a bit too daunting. Feedback in general should be an organic thing. Someone should be able to speak their mind when something is not working, and when something is working. There was a huge rubric for each thing we gave feedback on, and I feel that there was pressure to put so much thought into every single response. In one class we saw four presentations. We were expected to give four thoughtful feedbacks that had eight different categories within these rubrics. We were given a few minutes in between to take notes. This means that based off of a combined eight minutes or so of note-taking that we were expected to talk about 32 different categories from 4 different projects that were completely different. This led to feedback for the last project being a lot of two-word answers, or sentence fragments that are not really helpful or critical to the presenters.
I feel that feedback would have been easier if it had been immediate and concise. I understand that we should be evaluating each other on the rubrics provided, but if feedback would have been a succinct paragraph in relation to the rubric, I feel that feedback would have been more timely and genuine. Maybe in those few minutes inbetween presentations, we could have had the Google document pulled up at the front of the class. That way, everyone could see that everyone was responding, and the presenter could have seen their successes and shortcomings in real time. And instead of working a rubric where you’re not quite sure which column lines up with what category, a peer’s name with a small space for a meaningful paragraph would have been more productive, or so I feel. I believe that reflection should be at the heart of education. However, maybe I should have been asked to grade myself on the rubric, while paying attention to the smaller, meaningful feedback that I had gotten from my peers.
All of these thoughts are not to say that feedback in this class was a bad thing. Most of the feedback that I got was productive, though lacking in criticisms or suggestions. But there are some people who have not given feedback at all. There are some who gave up giving feedback a while ago. And those that have given feedback up until the end have maybe defaulted to getting something done, as opposed to putting meaning behind it.