3 Priorities for Written Feedback
1. Selection & efficiency
2. Lesson structure
3. Personalization & interaction
2. Lesson structure
3. Personalization & interaction
Priority 1: Lesson Selection & Efficiency
It is a challenge to follow written advice about writing. Some research suggests that students implement about 60% of the revision issues targeted by instructors. To improve the adoption rate for your advice, focus on one or two revision needs, driven as much as is practicable by the student’s announced concerns.
Prioritizing higher order concerns is key to the OWC, just like it is in the work we do in HCW 6171. Although we want to avoid the “we don't teach grammar” response, we also want to avoid anything that a student might see as editing or proofreading help. When a student requests grammar or proofreading over all other concerns, please touch briefly on their concerns, provide them with links to the Writer’s Handbook, let them know about relevant Workshops, but spend the bulk of your time and your comments on global issues.
Prioritizing higher order concerns is key to the OWC, just like it is in the work we do in HCW 6171. Although we want to avoid the “we don't teach grammar” response, we also want to avoid anything that a student might see as editing or proofreading help. When a student requests grammar or proofreading over all other concerns, please touch briefly on their concerns, provide them with links to the Writer’s Handbook, let them know about relevant Workshops, but spend the bulk of your time and your comments on global issues.
Priority 2: Lesson Structure
In The Online Writing Conference, Beth Hewett argues that students who are reading instruction about writing benefit most from learning information in this order:
I strongly recommend using this structure when you write your overall comment or comments at the top of the student’s draft. As an instructor, I prefer a 1-sentence formulation for #1 and a separate sentence for #2. #3 is, of course, the bulk of your instruction and can’t be rendered formulaically.
- WHAT issue your lesson will target
- WHY that issue can pose an important problem for readers
- HOW the student can change the existing text to resolve that problem
I strongly recommend using this structure when you write your overall comment or comments at the top of the student’s draft. As an instructor, I prefer a 1-sentence formulation for #1 and a separate sentence for #2. #3 is, of course, the bulk of your instruction and can’t be rendered formulaically.
Priority 3: Personalization, Interaction
Remember that students choose to work for us because they are looking for feedback they can’t get from a writer’s handbook or other static source. Help our writers feel like we are communicating with them vividly, engaging them in a conversation about their particular writing and needs. They’ll want to come back, they’ll tell their friends, and we’ll build our audience: one student writer at a time.
Avoid the temptation to copy and paste chunks of your lessons into your response—students are experts at detecting impersonal text. (This doesn’t apply in quite the same way to the rest of your template. Feel free to have a standard opening for your instruction, for example.)
Personally, one of the strategies that I’ve found to be particularly useful in establishing a sense of real-personhood is to invite the writer in my response email to let me know if he/she received my feedback as an openable file. This creates room for a little bit of dialogue. Additionally, I have let writers know in that email about when they can find me at the regular center or satellites; through that invitation I’ve had some great in-person follow-up conversations with writers about their revisions and continued work.
Avoid the temptation to copy and paste chunks of your lessons into your response—students are experts at detecting impersonal text. (This doesn’t apply in quite the same way to the rest of your template. Feel free to have a standard opening for your instruction, for example.)
Personally, one of the strategies that I’ve found to be particularly useful in establishing a sense of real-personhood is to invite the writer in my response email to let me know if he/she received my feedback as an openable file. This creates room for a little bit of dialogue. Additionally, I have let writers know in that email about when they can find me at the regular center or satellites; through that invitation I’ve had some great in-person follow-up conversations with writers about their revisions and continued work.
Advice for responding to drafts
Advice on saving time, writing lessons rhetorically, strategies for communication, and responding to grammar.
Time
- We allot 30 minute draft for papers of 1-5 pages and 45 minutes for papers of 6-10 pages. You will know how long to spend on each draft by clicking on the appropriate appointment block in WCOnline (the overall info about the draft will tel you how long it is).
- Keep track of your time, whether you are working on a 45 minute shift or a 30 minute shift! Your time is valuable, and the Writing Center doesn’t pay you to exceed your contract, so don't spend more time on your drafts than necessary!
- Keeping to the time limit will help you prioritize your concerns.
- Writing less means communicating more directly: students are not adept at wading through extensive feedback.
- Read the draft strategically, focusing on the introduction and just a few sentences from each paragraph: is there a main claim? Does it run through all the paragraphs? Do the paragraphs use evidence persuasively? Do the introduction and conclusion ably frame the draft?
- Automate what you can. The logistics page gives you instructions on how to automate pasting in your email template and Bccing the writing center on your emails.
Write Lessons Rhetorically
- Use praise to teach writers how they can help their readers: “Your transition from X to Y helps me as a reader see your argument develop. Great job!”
Strategies
- Choose to have a global-comments-focused or embedded-comments-focused response, depending on the needs of the assignment.
- Show that you are responsive to students’ concerns by echoing the words from their submission form in your response.
- Refer from global comments to embedded comments and back again, to help students see patterns.
- Ask substantive questions that can’t be answered with a yes or no.
Grammar
- You’re not there to edit their paper, but to give advice to help them develop as a writer, to build their rhetorical awareness.
- When there are a lot of proofreading/grammatical errors, comment on only the first paragraph, then give them strategies for proofreading—googling phrases they’re unsure about, comparing their phrases to the lit they cite.
- Tell them to check the dictionary—you don’t have to correct each error!
- Choose just one grammatical issue to address.
Prepare your Template
Spend some time before your first shift designing a template that helps you provide a consistent structure in all your Written Feedback instruction. Work to keep your template updated as your own pedagogy and style change.
Your template should be in your voice, so that it doesn’t read as robotic or from a different tonal universe.
Your template should be in your voice, so that it doesn’t read as robotic or from a different tonal universe.
Template Essentials
Your name and role
- My name is Sarah, and I’ll be your Writing Center instructor for this draft. OR:
- I’m Sarah Olson, a Writing Center instructor and doctoral student in English, and I’m happy to offer some feedback on this draft of your Journalism 202 essay.
- Here at the top of your draft I offer some general feedback on 1 or 2 important revision issues. Below, in the actual text of your draft, I’ve included [bold and bracketed comments] that point to specific opportunities for revision. OR:
- Here at the top of your draft I offer some general feedback on an important revision issue. Below, in the actual text of your draft, I’ve included comments that point to specific opportunities for revision. I suggest that you read the overall comments first as they help contextualize the inserted comments.
Template Options
Set expectations
- Just as in the in-person Writing Center, our time to work together is limited to 30 or 45 minutes. OR:
- Just as in our face-to-face meetings in the Writing Center, the time we have is finite, and there are always many different levels of feedback that could be offered. The comments I’m sending you represent my best effort, given the time constraints of Online Writing Center work, to show you what your next steps might be. I hope they are useful! OR:
- You asked for feedback addressing proofreading issues, but as your reader I was not distracted by those issues. Instead, I saw your thesis statement as a slightly more important revision issue.
- The most important revision issues are described here in my overall advice, so I recommend starting with that. Then go on to the more local issues I describe in the comments I embedded in your draft.
- Some students find it easier to print out this response and then check off revision issues as you apply them in your typed draft.
- If you want to talk in person about this draft or any other work you are doing, I’d love for you to set up an appointment to meet with me! I work at the main Writing Center on Monday and Wednesday mornings. You can schedule an appointment by calling our receptionists at 608-263-1992. Ask to work with Sarah O.!
- If you want to work live with an instructor as you revise your draft, consider using our Virtual Meeting option! Learn more at https://writing.wisc.edu/Individual/LocationsHours.html#skype
- If you have a short question about any of the issues I described here, please shoot me an email! If you want to submit a new draft, please do so via the same method you used to submit this draft, starting here: https://writing.wisc.edu/Individual/LocationsHours.html#email
- Please do send me a quick email to let me know that you received this feedback.
Example Feedback Template
This is the template that you should write at the top of the student's draft. Your template should be yours, in your voice. This is just an example.
Hi [NAME]!
My name is Sarah and I’ll be working with you on this draft. Here at the top of your draft I offer some general feedback on an important revision issue. Below, in the actual text of your draft, I’ve included comments that point to specific opportunities for revision. I suggest that you read the overall comments first as they help contextualize the inserted comments. Just as in our face-to-face meetings in the Writing Center, the time we have is finite, and there are always many different levels of feedback that could be offered. The comments I’m sending you represent my best effort, given the time constraints of Online Writing Center work, to show you what your next steps might be. I hope they are useful! Overall, I really enjoyed reading this [ESSAY/STATEMENT/ETC]. [GENUINE, REPEATABLE STRENGTH. QUOTE STUDENT TEXT AND EXPLAIN HOW QUOTED SECTION HELPS THE READER] In the submission form, you mentioned that you were concerned about [SUMMARIZE STUDENT CONCERNS; [OVERVIEW OF 2-3 ISSUES I PLAN TO DISCUSS]. [AREA #1: TITLE
REPEAT FOR AREAS #2 AND/OR #3] With such a great draft to work from, [NAME], I know this piece will only get stronger as you revise. If you want to talk in person about this draft or any other work you are doing, you’re welcome to set up an appointment to meet with me! I work at the main Writing Center on Thursday evenings. You can schedule an appointment by calling our receptionists at 608-263-1992. Ask to work with Maggie H! Or if you want to work live with an instructor face-to-face online as you revise your draft, consider signing up for a Virtual Meeting session! You can determine which of our tutors are available for these Virtual Meetings by checking the calendar on WCOnline. Learn more here! Good luck with your revisions! -Sarah |
Email Template
It is useful as well to write a templated response that you can use when emailing the writer back his/her paper as an attachment. This is another opportunity for you to be personable and to encourage the dialogic possibilities of email instruction. Constructing a templated response will also save a TON of time and allow you to meet the 30-minute or 45-minute time limit.
Email Template Example
This is the template that you will use to construct the body of the email that you send directly to the student, with your feedback on the student's paper attached. Again, your template should be yours, in your voice. This is just an example.
Hey ____ ,
I've attached my feedback for your ____ . Thanks so much for sending it in--I hope my thoughts are helpful! If you could shoot me a quick email to let me know that you received this and that the document was openable and all that, I would appreciate it. And of course, let me know if you have any brief questions about my feedback. If you have longer questions, this semester I work at main center most Wednesdays from 10:00 to 1:00 and at our Memorial Library satellite on Thursdays from 7:00 to 10:00, and I'd love to chat in person about your writing. Thanks again! Sarah |
I'm here for you. Anytime. Seriously. |