Faculty can be challenged by students not reading feedback. We discovered the ability to see if students have downloaded annotated comments on papers in Canvas. We will share data we have collected and discuss our intervention tests to help our students see engage more effectively with this important learning tool.
According to Ackerman and Gross (2010), there are mixed results when it comes to students and reading feedback. Whether a student engages in the feedback process seems to be complicated by emotions or faculty being able to not overwhelm a student with feedback that is not understood. In addition, Pitt, Edd, Norton, and Lin (2016) found that engagement with feedback may very well depend on the emotional maturity of students.
A feature of Canvas is to see when student download annotated feedback on papers. Faculty have complained that not all students read feedback, based on anecdotal data that mistakes are often repeated. We are now able to find out who is reading feedback and who is not on paper submissions. At Central Washington University, three of the faculty in the Information technology and Administrative Management department have been collecting a baseline of information regarding the downloading of these annotated comments.
In Fall 2018, Winter 2019 and Spring 2019, we collected baseline data to see how students engaged with feedback in several undergraduate and graduate classes. We gathered data on gender, grade level (i.e., freshman, sophomore), submitted dates, when feedback was downloaded, how long did it take the student to download feedback and other data as appropriate. We would like to discuss our discoveries in the baseline data collection and the variables we think are crucial to the next level of intervention with students to use feedback as a learning tool.