By Thomas Lee, Political Science
Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024
Many students in my political theory courses every semester would come to my office hours distressed about how they should go about writing their political theory papers. While the wide-ranging possibilities of political theorizing reflected in the paper questions were exciting for some, they were foreboding for others. Though I could help the students who came to my office hours, I realized I needed to provide more assistance to all students in their paper writing process. In response, I designed and implemented a classroom activity aimed to enlarge and improve the feedback that students received on their papers in order to support student learning and improve future performance.
Drawing on Hattie and Timperley (“The Power of Feedback”), I identified the limited nature of the feedback that students typically received on their papers. I realized that my students had been typically receiving feedback at the task level (the quality of the paper itself) to the exclusion of feedback at the process level (e.g., breaking down passages, developing arguments, refining claims), the self-regulation level (planning, discipline, and other personal behaviors), and the personal level (beliefs about personal qualities). Indeed, my blind grading policy intended to improve fairness focused attention on the quality of the paper itself without regard for how the paper came to be written. And though much class time was spent on discussing best practices for writing political theory papers, actual issues that students experienced at the process and self-regulation level were typically overlooked after the submission of work and in written instructor feedback.
I sought to remedy this situation and enlarge the feedback that students received on their papers by designing and implementing an interactive, collective classroom activity. At the class meeting after the submission of their papers, I asked all students to take an anonymous survey of two-dozen short answer questions that asked them to reflect on their just completed papers at the task, process, and self-regulation levels. I then projected their responses so that they could see how other students went about writing their papers and led a class discussion about their responses. Some sample questions: whether they had a plan for writing their paper and what was it; how they chose their paper question; whether they were able to develop an argument and how; whether their argument changed during the paper writing process and why; whether they read instructor feedback on previous papers; whether they had discussed their paper with anybody outside of class and whether it was helpful.
This activity resulted in several positive outcomes. First, students received a wider range of feedback, especially at the process and self-regulation levels, than would have been possible on an individual basis in a large class. Second, students received immediate, structured feedback about non-task aspects of their performance that may be received too late to be beneficial if received at all. Third, students could compare and contrast aspects of their paper writing process and pick up tips and techniques from others. Fourth, students could exhale together from the stress of the assignment and thereby build – as I have always found – a collaborative, supportive, and even jovial atmosphere.
Students over many semesters have repeatedly remarked about the utility of this activity not only for writing subsequent political theory papers but also for completing assignments in other courses. Whereas task level feedback is often limited and specific to a single, unrepeated assignment, process and self-regulation level feedback can be meaningful and useful for any future assignment. This activity is one example of how instructors can further support student learning and improve future performance by enlarging and improving the provision of feedback.
Hattie, John, and Helen Timperley. “The Power of Feedback.” Review of Educational Research 77, no. 1 (March 2007): 81–112.