Descriptive Feedback Tools

Technology has come a long way in allowing teachers to provide meaningful feedback to students in a timely and efficient manner. Not only are there technologies that allow you to provide written feedback the same as you would with a pen and paper, now you can also provide oral and visual feedback as well! This can save teachers time when recording feedback as well as getting that feedback to students quickly, even if the student is not present in class to receive it.

The Peel District School Board has partnered with Microsoft to give every student and teacher access to the Office 365 collaboration and communication environment. Among much else, this environment provides users with 25 Gb of online storage in Onedrive, as well as access to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. It also provides teachers with the ability to create class sites where students can share their work with the whole class.

OneDrive: Any Microsoft Office file saved in the Office 365 OneDrive can be shared. Students can either upload existing Microsoft Office files to their OneDrive or create new ones and then share the file with you (note: teachers are know by Mr. or Ms. and their last name - no first name). Once shared with you, you can view and comment on the file.

Collaborative Documents: Students can upload or create Microsoft Office files in the Collaborative Documents area in Office 365 class sites the same way they can in OneDrive but it is automatically available for the whole class to access so there is no need to go through the steps of sharing the file.

Assignment Dropbox: Students can upload files to the Assignment Dropbox in Office 365 class sites. You can then edit or make comments on the work. Once you have added feedback to the work you can share the annotated document with the student to review the feedback provided.

Word Web App

When students share their assignment with you, you can add comments/feedback or edit the document directly to make changes.

PowerPoint Web App

The PowerPoint web is useful for marking student presentations, but it can also be useful for marking any graphic work that students create (like mind maps, infographics, etc.)

D2L is a virtual learning environment that allows you to provide student feedback on quizzes, work submitted to a dropbox, discussion forum and more. To access D2L go to pdsb.elearningontario.ca; your username is your P# and the default password is your date of birth (YYYYMMDD). For students their username is their student number and their password is their date of birth (YYYYMMDD).

D2L Quizzes

The quiz tool in D2L allows teachers to add general feedback about a question that a student will get once they have submitted the quiz. For certain question types D2L also allows teachers to type in answer specific feedback so that after the quiz, students get individualized feedback about their responses which can contain suggestions about how they can improve. Once quizzes have been submitted, teachers can review student responses and add feedback for the students or change the automatic feedback that was created during quiz set-up. This allows teachers to personalize feedback for students.

D2L Dropbox

Once students have submitted work into a dropbox in D2L teachers can create and use a rubric to assess the work. Teachers can also type in feedback and include videos, pictures, links, formulae, tables and other tools to help make the feedback more meaningful for students. In addition, teachers can make an audio recording as part of the feedback.

Not only is Turnitin.com an excellent application for tracking plagiarism, it is also very powerful for assessment. Turnitin.com acts like a dropbox - keeping all files stored in one location, time-stamped from when they were submitted. The service also has some excellent tools for leaving comments/feedback on student work.

Discussion Forums: Allow students to ask or answer questions, post examples of their work and get replies from other students as well as from the teacher. Discussion Forums are available in:

• Office 365
• D2L

Blogs: Allows students to post their work, thoughts or opinions that other students or the teachers can comment on. Blogs are available in:

• Office 365 (personal and class blogs)
• D2L (personal blog only)

Shared documents: Allow students to have others highlight specific parts of their work and comment on those specific parts. Shared documents are available in:

• Office 365
• Turnitin

ePortfolio: Allows students to create presentations and upload examples of their work and write their own reflections on that work. It also allows students to share their work with others and get comments about that work or their reflections. ePortfolio is available in:

• D2L

If you still like to use a pen to hand write your comments to students, then get a stylus from any tech store and use your device for marking.

Making an audio recording on your device is an easy way to capture feedback or give a detailed response to a student question. Audio recording is ideally suited to situations when you want to give detailed feedback about an assignment in which your tone and emphasis are important to communicate. Both Turnitin.com and D2L allow you to record audio comments relating to the submitted files. Students can listen to the comment when the "graded" file is electronically submitted back to them.

There are some apps available that will allow you to annotate on top of and record audio comments of a video. They allow you to pause, slow down, fast forward or rewind while you record your comments and annotations. This will allow you to provide feedback to students who have submitted videos for assessment.