Notwithstanding, giving feedback to students is conventionally strenuous for teachers, especially for classes with a large number of learners undertaken by a single teacher! Conversely, there are current digital tools by which the teacher is able to retain the standardized quality of teaching and yet save lots of time (almost 90%) by seeking the digital assistance of Google for Education (G Suite for Education). It is all made free of cost.
How to achieve that?
Setting the scene prior to the actual teaching time is the main recipe. Once done, you are to focus more on monitoring the learning process remotely. Let’s see how to make it happen in the following points.
1- To appreciate students’ participation, you can:-
add ‘Feedback’ forms to the correct answers in Google forms beforehand by sending a short quiz before and/or after teaching with auto-graded questions. Of course, reusing quizzes in digital formats is the real blessing of teaching in the 21st century.
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use friendly appreciating words at the end of the given quiz: Go to setting>presentation to add that.
If students are to send written assignment, have them typed instead and sent it as a Google Doc using ‘Google Classroom’ app on your smartphone where files are neatly stored in the assignment folder. Subsequently, there is more than one way to appreciate you may count on:-
i) Pre-install ‘CheckMark’ extension at the chrome web store, and click its icon to activate. After that, commence reviewing students work one by one. Click or highlight the part you would like to comment on where a panel of shortened feedback will pop up to chose from. Add as many comments only through ‘clicks’ as you like.
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ii) For auditory learners, nothing is better than praising their effort with your warm voice. Kaizena add-on offers an incredible experience to assist students with just your recorded voice. From ‘Add-ons’ tab at Google Doc screen, install and run ‘kaizena’. Not only does the precious ‘Kaizena’ provide previously inconceivable voiced feedback, but there are other methods worth to explore and deploy.
iii) Should you prefer to type your feedback and make it widely visible, you can simply insert a comment by marking the extract you like, then click ‘add comment’ button that will appear on the right margin of the paper.
iv) However, you can still enjoy correct and comment feature built-in Google doc. By switching to the ‘Suggesting’ mode at the top corner of the window, you are able to add/delete words and insert relevant comments and feedbacks.
v) Send automated ‘Stickers’ through applying ‘Flubaroo’ add-on to your quiz. That particular add-on helps in sending differentiated feedbacks according to the score received. Learn how to do set it up with a minimal effort at their add-on site.
VI)What do you think about taking it further and broadcast words of appreciation on a youtube live event! Try it out. But make sure to keep it ‘unlisted’ to refrain any external member to intervene. And only those with provided links to the event can view.
2- Sayback method can be attained effectively when the teacher repeats what students write or say. Promoting student’s self-esteem and personalized learning will inherently occur. You have the choice to either:-
Repeat some parts of a written or voice recorded assignment before commenting on it, using ‘kaizena’ feature aforementioned.
Aggregate common mistakes or points to praise and screencast your feedback on youtube live. Think how encouraged and highly-motivated your students will become when you name them in a public event and appreciate their effort.
3- Suggesting Links to resources to help students out in their study has a great value on self-learning and promoting learner autonomy. You can do that by adding either way:-
Via Google Classroom, keep resource links (readings/video) in the course description page.
Always add resource links when assigning a task to your students in the instruction section.
If students are working on a quiz, add a resource link in the ‘feedback’ area for incorrect answers.
Similarly, you can add it to the ‘comment’ box at the Google document.
Adopting ‘Kaizena’ lesson feature is another interesting choice to make use of. You will need to add links to ‘Kaizena’ main page before inserting them.
4- Asking questions or prompts in class in the lead-in phase is an acknowledged norm when teaching. In flipped classrooms, it is a stage that happens before starting the face-to-face setting enabling all students to get enough warmed-up and readier for an informative session.
Teachers can send a question primarily from the Google Classroom app letting enrolled learners engaged in fruitful conversation at their convenient time.
Send the question (s) in a Google form preceded by a short video about the topic.
You may like to use Kaizena web app and get voiced responses instead of traditionally written ones.
5- “What’s next?” is always quested by the teacher after class. Though, answering it with a simple homework or a formative/summative assessment is fairly constraining their voracious potentials. In other words, it is our responsibility to hone their skills and deepen their knowledge by giving them extras (more reading, more exercises, or a project related to real life). As such, an indispensable part of feedback is what you suggest to your students to further improve their knowledge and skills.
Accordingly, educators ought to add a section of “Suggested” readings, videos or projects to do on each topic. Otherwise, do that through the comments you publish to your learners.
6- Students should always listen to your advice and see your guidance. Though, you don’t have to repeat it over and over again to each and every learner. Several methods like peer-to-peer evaluation is widely followed. However, thinking digitally may come up with ways other than a simple “I suggest/You should” saying.
Push a good model of the assignment as an attachment at Google Classroom before asking students to work on their own.
Prepare a list of common suggestions you give in ‘Google Keep’. Once you are reviewing a document, activate the ‘keep notepad’ from ‘Tools’, then drag and drop relevant comments.
Insert links and related guiding materials using the ‘lesson’ feature in Kaizena, as discussed earlier in this article.
7- Sharing personal experience is always inspiring for any learner. On the educator’s side creates a solid link with who he/she teaches. Further, sharing intriguing stories everlast learning experiences. Have your students do it the way they are familiar with these days:-
Ask students to reflect on what they learn by taking a photo of their work or shot a short video giving them a voice to share their ideas. It can be implemented in a closed Google Plus Community or rather make it an interesting assignment for them.
Include yourself in a story to tell. Why not?
Collect their stories and share them in a website to create by Google Sites.
8- Enhancing social learning is as important as regular in-class learning. Students should be exposed to other experts. Guide them to subscribe in external communities on Google Plus, getting them in touch with other learners or professionals globally.
9- The last method but not least is to encourage with simple words or nice emoticons or stickers. Emojis are a built-in feature in Google docs. You can add any of them or even draw one from ‘Insert’ tab’ > ‘Special Characters’.
Even if you are tired after daylong teaching, such a simple encouragement means a lot to your student 😎👍.
