Providing Quality Embedded Feedback for Students

Your students have just submitted their drafts, and now you are faced with the daunting process of editing these drafts. Stop. First, consider your role in this stage of the writing process. Are you the editor or the instructor? If you are the editor, you are doing the work, and the student does not necessarily process the changes you will make. On the other hand, as the instructor, you are guiding your students through this phase of the process, and showing them how to do their own revising and editing. If we simply turn on Track Changes and bleed all over their papers, what have they learned? They see the paper, correct the mistakes (ideally), and hope to do better next time. Instead, allow students to have the most active role in this process as you provide questioning, encourage critical thinking, and direct students to target their own areas of growth.

Promote critical thinking by providing introspective questions. For instance, if a thesis does not seem to correspond to the paragraph topics, your comment bar may state, "This is a valid thesis. Do these same topics appear in the following paragraphs?" If a passage is unclear, instead of labeling it "Faulty construction" (of which I am guilty), offer a phrase like, "Read this passage aloud. Does this sound right to you?"

As students read their feedback, they should be engaging in a critical thinking process that will empower them in the writing process. Other elements of composition and rubric criteria can help guide you. Students often err in the grammatical person; when the inappropriate use of "you," appears, I might say, "In casual conversation, "you" denotes "everyone." However, this situation does not apply to everyone reading your essay. How can this be phrased for an audience of more than one person?" Structure your comments so the students have to think about their writing before they simply correct it.

To further promote self- editing, direct students to resources. As patterns emerge in student papers, do not forget that the Success Boosters, built into every course, can provide a solid jump off point for them. Develop an arsenal of links to help them, and use these resources as an integral part of your embedded comments.

As instructors, we are more than human spell-checkers, and our goal is for students to evaluate their own work, and to be empowered to improve their own writing.