I gave timely feedback to all my peers on their teaching assignments.
My feedback addressed the following aspects of each lesson:
1. Planning and organization
2. Appropriate and meaningful use of technology
3. Attention to formative and summative assessment
4. Effective management of technology
5. Appropriate individual activities, group activities and discussion
6. Integration of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy with the lesson
7. Differentiation of instruction
8. Encouragement of broader exploration of issues
Examples of some of the feedback I gave:
Focus on observable behavior: All my comments were based on what my peers had actually done in their teaching sessions. For example, after attending Suzu’s lesson on ‘Videos’ (student led session), I made the following remark – “The activity with the digital stories helped us to remember the purposes of video use for communication as described in some of the material we went through for class. The discussion that followed enhanced understanding. You asked us to compare the two digital stories which involved analysis and evaluation” in response to the prompt asking us to assess how well the lesson addressed Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. While I identifying the elements of Bloom’s taxonomy that were addressed by her lesson, I also referred to a specific activity (comparing common elements across two digital stories) which I felt had helped in touching those aspects.
Positive comments/sharing ideas: If I had suggestions for anyone, I always started out with what I appreciated about their presentation and then offered my suggestion to them. For example, during their Micro teaching 1 (online) assignments Suzu and Scott had not instructed us to decide who would take responsibility for summarizing the group discussions after we our break-out session. When we came back together on the online platform, there was a slight confusion in my group as to who would speak on behalf of the group. While giving them feedback on their group activity, I wrote – “We engaged in a discussion based group activity. This was well organized and conducted flawlessly by you. I have a very minor suggestion based on my online teaching experience last week – instructing the group to decide who’s going to volunteer to speak might enable the online discussion based group activity to be carried out more efficiently. Otherwise, it creates confusion as students cannot see each other.” I framed my feedback in a way that made it clear that I appreciated the way they had conducted the activity (placing of a positive comment first) and offered a possible solution to a problem that I had perceived as a student (placing of a perceived problem following a positive comment). Also, the focus of my feedback here was on an aspect of instruction that could be controlled and changed in the future.
Challenge and affirmation: In Suzu’s lesson on ‘Videos’ (student led session) she had introduced us to the concept of Vlogs. Though this was an interesting concept in and of itself, I felt that she could have focused on the educational use of Vlogs in her lesson. Under the prompt ‘Lesson encourages broader exploration of issues’ I responded with the following comment: “Your lesson got me thinking about Vlogs. It might have been interesting to talk a little more about its potential for educational use.” While I indicated that her inclusion of Vlogs in the lesson had been a good idea as it had compelled us to think about a new idea, I also suggested that she might have considered focusing on how to use it in educational settings. The suggestion challenged her omission of emphasis on the educational use of Vlogs.
Ownership of comments: I tried to include personal pronouns in my sentences as I gave feedback to my peers to indicate that I was taking ownership of the remarks I was making about their teaching. For example, following Jamie’s lesson on ‘Differentiation’ (student led session), in response to the prompt ‘Attention to Formative and Summative Assessment’ I wrote: “I really liked the thought experiment that you had created. It was a good way of finding out how each of us conceived of differentiated instruction as educators. You were able to get everyone to think about how the topic was personally relevant to them. Your final activity involved looking at technology based differentiated instruction critically; this was helpful in generating food for thought!” Using ‘I’ to begin the comment was an effort to make my feedback personal.
Reflection on the process of feedback:
In the course of giving feedback to my peers, I realized that giving feedback requires a great deal of thought if I wanted it to be useful to the recipients. The rubric that we had to adhere to give feedback was detailed and specific. This made me to think about teaching in a structured manner instead of looking at a lesson’s overall effectiveness. Furthermore, as I wrote the comments I had to reflect back on concrete occurrences that had transpired during the lesson and could provide support to my comments. This taught me the significance of being specific when I give feedback to people about their teaching; being specific made the feedback useful for those who were receiving it and also compelled me to refrain from making comments which were vague. I mostly provided feedback on the same day as I had attended a lesson, however, there were two occasions when I gave feedback a day after the lesson was taught; I strongly feel that giving feedback on the same day is better because I remembered what had happened during the lesson much more easily on the same day than the next day. Even though one might think it is not hard to remember things that happened the day before, it is surprisingly challenging to do so when you have to give structured feedback to someone.