Positive Feedback on Assignments
I teach online and grade a lot of assignments each week. Any suggestions for encouraging words to use in my feedback? I seem to be using the same words over and over such as great, excellent, etc.
I tend to do the same thing. I have tried to change that by being more specific about what I liked in the student's work. It can be hard to do with a 500 character limit on my feedback, but I try to put at least a sentence or two in there about what I liked in the work.
It can help to also keep information for each student in a separate file so you can not improvement or changes they make from week to week
I am a online trainer for a college in the admission department. The approach I use is picking up a thesaurus and finding a new word to use on a daily basis. This has been extremly helpful in keeping my employees happy. This simple tip keeps me ahead of the game when speaking with certain advisors.
Much of the theory surrounding grading composition papers points to the fact that many comments on papers, be they positive or negative, are easily transferred from one student's work to another, which doesn't highlight what the student really needs to improve upon or what they've done well. The trick is to leave specific comments. Rather than writing "good" or "great," address what specifically was "good" or "great". Repeat the student's words back to them.
I remember as a student, I was always so eager for feedback from teachers and disappointed when it wasn't specific.
