This is another exploration of how feedback works in a Humanities makerspace. These are other posts on the same subject:
There are many, many more.
The impetus for this particular post, the one you’re now reading, was an essay students were assigned in November of 2019:
That post, like all such posts, invites students to practice deep reading while putting together a writing prompt. Students strengthen the white-matter pathways in their brains while looking at the authentic importance of empathy. Essays remain our best means of exploring ideas and communicating understanding; in this case, the focus is the skill of empathy.
An essay’s context and authenticity are obviously based on preceding assignments, which include in-class assignments, short writing prompts, and any instructional posts. Another way to phrase this is that the design of all creative work in a makerspace is concatenative. The word comes from the root for chain, and that’s the metaphor: Strength comes from successive links, and each link is dependent on the one before it. Weak links break the chain.
The chain starts with that background work, and if it is all done with fidelity and in good faith, we have enough of a feedback loop to start the essay. To avoid mixing metaphors, call it a feedback chain, and let’s see if that image works.
Here is part of the chain that directs a student’s formative work toward the work of an essay:
Each part of the four-part empathy assignment seen here is split into two writing prompts: a narrative, descriptive, or analytical one; and then a metacognitive one about the preceding response.
Done properly, that four-part practice of empathy is more than enough to lead a student into the universal guide to produce the essay itself. I’m able to asks questions and identify possible subjects and approaches. Done properly, in fact, the practice is part of the writing process.
But it all depends on feedback.
The Feedback Chain
All learning depends on a student’s focus and feedback. There’s nothing special about a makerspace in this regard:
The difference is the extensive use of digital instruction and feedback. I’m inviting students (and others) to read more deeply and carefully, and that philosophy extends to feedback. The in-class work remains most important, but the interstitial elements are how we solve problems of access, time, and individual needs. See the list at the top of this post, or start here:
All written commentary must be actionable, and it ought to stem from formative, in-class, and extemporaneous feedback. It’s not about the post-mortem dissection of student work to identify its strengths and weaknesses. The focus is on the modular aspects of the work and the specific needs of that student.
Let’s use a class of 30 seniors and the assignment that preceded the essay embedded above. That assignment is part of an interstitial lecture on empathy:
Students had time in and out of class to read this and annotate a printed copy of Chad Fowler’s essay, which provides us the four-part exercise in practicing empathy. They then had from 10/29 to 11/6 to complete those four tasks.
What follows is a discussion of the work and feedback chain that is created when an assignment like this comes in. I’ll embed screenshots and provide links to exemplars.
Feedback Chain: Your Most Important Skill
We start with the students who obviously haven’t taken the assignment seriously. We can use Google to track how long they spend on their work, if it’s typed, in addition to tracking them the old-fashioned way in class.
Above is a student who wasted time and then put this together at the last minute. It’s important to note that he handed something in, which is better than nothing. Still, it’s not enough to give feedback. It’s instead an opportunity to tell him to look at an instructional post that covers how much, in general, is required to guarantee actionable feedback:
As the blurb says, students have to learn to self-assess and advocate. This is the most basic level of self-assessment and self-advocacy: knowing when you’ve failed to write enough.
Contrast the lack of writing in the first example with a good-faith effort that misses the mark:
My feedback there explains the issue. The instructions in class and online asked for one kind of writing; this student provided something else.
Graded traditionally, she would lose points. Her hard work might be given supportive feedback — “You’ve done a good job summarizing the text” — but she’d still lose credit.
The makerspace system lets us note the error, correct it, and then reward her for amenability and a willingness to retry. She has to redo it, obviously, and it matters that she didn’t follow directions; the hard work and good-faith effort is what matters most, though.
Grade abatement also allows us to deal with what happens if, for whatever reason, she refuses to take the feedback and improve. In that unfortunate case, her lack of amenability leads to a lower profile score.
Above is a similar example — a good-faith effort to do the assignment that misses the mark. This isn’t metacognitive. As I wrote to the student, the term is less important than the idea of learning best by thinking about thinking, but metacognition has been part of every assignment for two months; this student really ought to know better.
That doesn’t mean she should lose points. Instead, the pressure is greater: She has to show amenability and initiative, take this feedback and ask questions, correct her own misunderstanding, and apply it the next time without error.
If she does that moving forward, it’s evidence of the skills and traits that matter. It’s part of a feedback chain. If she doesn’t, it highlights a more serious issue than a failure to follow directions on one assignment.
This next screenshot shows how I try to individualize feedback. Based on what constitutes sufficient work, this student deserves no credit; it would be toxic to frame that in terms of lost points, however, so it’s framed here as a failure to meet the basic requirements of learning.
More importantly, this particular student is making a good-faith effort to do the work on time. For him, this is a step forward, and what he’s written is insightful. I’m using both our in-class discussions and this submitted piece to push him further down the right path.
It becomes, again, about how he takes that feedback and applies it. The grade abatement profiles allow us to define strength, growth, and mastery in relative terms — per student, with a focus on each student reaching their individual goals.
Compare the above example with this one:
This student has written a response that is about the same length, but this one actually lacks empathy. In fact, he’s done exactly what the reading tells us not to do:
Next time you find yourself in a conversation like this, slow down. Force yourself to listen to the words you’re hearing. Consider the speaker’s motivation behind saying what he or she is saying. Consider the life and work experience that has led to his or her current world-view.
It’s reasonable to conclude that this student failed to do the required reading. If he did read, he didn’t read closely, and he didn’t annotate well enough to learn Fowler’s lessons.
However, the goal of the assignment isn’t just to read nonfiction and follow directions; it’s to develop empathy. The fact that this student is writing about empathy — a lack of it is still about it — lets me give him feedback, which means he’s met the basic requirements for a feedback chain.
We should always be making something in a makerspace, and while it’s true that the artifact is often the student himself, it’s usually about building something in writing. The more students treat writing as a creative process that is prompted by authentic experiences, the better.
The above screenshot shows an example of this. The student did well enough on the assignment that we can move on to the essay, which is outlined here. That sort of “river” essay requires a subject, and here is a subject this student is interested in: when parents track their kids’ phones.
This could lead to a personal narrative. It might turn into a research-driven argument. It might be a bit of both, which emulates the original “river” essay more completely. We can use the universal guide to writing to figure it out.
Another example:
This student did really well in answering each prompt, so where he didn’t quite follow directions — see my feedback here — it doesn’t really matter to the skill he’s learning. The bigger picture is the practice of empathy and the application of it on a daily basis. Beyond that, the bigger picture includes the next essay, and this student is ready to brainstorm about that writing process.
Speaking of that larger picture, this next example showcases what these exercises are really designed to do:
This student’s response echoes the pair of questions that frame the Humanities makerspace:
- What important, real-world problems are we solving?
- What components and tools do we need to solve those problems?
The more specific questions fit, too:
- What does it mean to be a human being?
- What does it mean to coexist in a society?
- What are my beliefs?
- How do I want to live my life?
That’s exactly what this student is discussing, and it will lead to excellent writing.
On the other end of the spectrum:
This is a student who tries to dodge the entire assignment by saying it doesn’t apply to him. That’s an obvious failure to read carefully and follow directions, because it deliberately ignores the spirit of the assignment. It’s better, however, to use this as an opportunity to talk about problem-solving and advocacy. He could have figured out a way to reshape the question, to ask for it to be reshaped for him, etc.
What about students who don’t do the assignment? The preceding examples are all from one class, and in that class, 60% of students completed the assignment enough to get some feedback. For the students who handed nothing in, my co-teacher and I left the following comment: Complete the rest of the assignment. If you need help, ask questions.
It’s important to think about this, though. Why do students need to be reminded to complete the rest of the assignment? The deadline came and went; the assignment now says “MISSING” in red letters on Google Classroom; their peers are getting feedback; we’re talking about the work in class; and in this case, as in every case, we’ve been focused on the work for quite a while. Do they really need a comment telling them to complete the rest of the assignment?
It’s not a rhetorical question. They might need redirection or refocusing, and they might need other modifications; that’s why a makerspace, like every other kind of classroom, operates under the umbrella of inclusion:
In another class period, only 25% of the students completed the assignment. That’s how it works in education: Each class has its own vibe, so to speak, and if some are highly productive, others, through quirks of the schedule or just random coincidence, will have a 25% compliance rate.
The next question: What do we do with students who hand in work late? We’ve moved on to another assignment, but the work is still meaningful. They deserve feedback, in that they are students who have done the work; there’s machinery involved, however, that moves us forward, and time is a finite resource.
My answer has been to provide exemplary work from another student. As we move on, I can say, “This is an exemplar; if you want feedback, start by comparing your work to this.” Students who aren’t meeting deadlines have to solve issues with another skill — organization, assiduousness, self-efficacy, etc — so this puts the onus on them. The door is always open, and direct questions will always get an answer, but the passive expectation of feedback on work done late or done insufficiently is a toxic one.
The model provided for the four-part empathy exercises can be viewed below, by clicking on a screenshot of what students are given through Google Classroom:
A Note on In-Class Feedback
In-class focus feedback is so important — see again this post on the subject — that it overshadows almost every other form of feedback available to us. This is a makerspace, a workshop; it depends on in-class focus.
Here is an example of how that importance is reiterated well into the year:
That announcement was posted to Google Classroom on 11/8/19. It was read aloud to each class. After what you see above, there were three links:
As I wrote here, all this writing is there to help students and other stakeholders practice deep reading. It’s also to make sure there are plenty of failsafes and redundancies in place. In-class focus is essential, and no amount of interstitial and Internet-driven innovation will change that.
Example: I use Google Forms regularly to get information and feedback from students, but Forms is a one-way street. There is no way to leave direct comments on student writing submitted through Forms.
On November 6, students were asked to indicate how far into The Things They Carried they had gotten after two weeks of independent reading. They were also asked to provide a paragraph or more of their thoughts so far. Here is the result:
The first tab shows the percentage of the novel students reported having read. Next to that is their response to the reading. Like every other kind of feedback initiated by students, it’s about value added. Some of those “thoughts” are so minimal that nothing is added. The one highlighted in red is plagiarized from Goodreads.com, so that student actually subtracted value. The rest fall on a spectrum from perfunctory to insightful.
The interesting element is that the only to give feedback is through a follow-up discussion. The text here cannot be seen by students, and sharing it with them, as I did above, requires names to be removed and other information to be made anonymous. I can’t highlight and respond to the text in that spreadsheet.
What that does is highlight the role of a feedback chain. We can have follow-up discussions, in class and online; I can send emails and make comments on Google Classroom; and students can use what they’ve written here to help them as we complete other exercises with the novel. For the ones who wrote well, regardless of how much they read, the conversation continues.