Feedback – The Secret Weapon

I get a kick out of feedback. It holds the potential to be a secret weapon that helps drive success; however, many view the vulnerability of sharing oneself with others as a scary and potentially dangerous place. I see this daily in my job where providing professional feedback is required to help teachers grow and yet some find the process intimidating. Some of the best growth occurs when we allow others to speak into our lives and give suggestions for us to contemplate and utilize. Despite knowing the importance of feedback I will admit I still found myself slightly nervous to present my creation. Perhaps it was my relatively beginner level understanding of online learning and LMS creation that made the vulnerability feel a little more real? Maybe it was my continued uncertainty over the effectiveness of Microsoft Team as my chosen LMS? Or was it the small amount classroom time I have as an administrator, limiting the opportunity for trails and testing of tools and online formats? Regardless of the reason it didn’t take long to remember the value of feedback, which led to a rewarding process.

What I learned?

Miranda, Catherine, and Raquel were all wonderful to work with. Their experiences as online teachers and consultants provided a wide array of expertise. As valuable as the sharing of my own course was, the opportunity to view the work that each of them created was equally or possibly more valuable. Miranda demonstrated Google Classroom and Catherine showed off SeeSaw and both demonstrated well organized and visually appealing designs. Racquel (and Curtis) used Microsoft Teams, so I especially benefited from seeing how they organized their course as it is the same LMS that I am using. And of course who doesn’t want to check out Minecraft education after looking at their prototype!

 

As for feedback from my group on my own course design, a few important things jumped out:

  1. A suggestion was made to ensure that content within Teams was stored in the correct place so that students were unable to edit and change teacher documents. This is an easy fix, but likely one I wouldn’t have made without someone recognizing my error.
  2. Another suggestion was to utilize a separate space for teacher specific documents, such as lesson plans, unit plans, and assessment data. Class Notebook would be a great place to store this information so that it was accessible when needed, but not complicating the overall visual appeal and ease of use within Teams.
  3. A third piece of feedback was from a question I posed about how to improve the method for turning students math assignments in when work needs to be displayed. My previous attempts landed on snapping a picture of work and submitting, but that was unreliable as picture taking skills of students are lacking and often submissions came through sideways or upside down. A suggestion was given to check out equatIO and see how it might help with this issue. I haven’t been able to check it out yet, but I look forward to taking a look.  If anyone has any other suggestions for submitting math work digitally I would love to hear them.

What now?

As I continue to tinker on my Microsoft Teams course prototype, there are a few things I need to attend to:

  1. Act on the feedback as outlined above.
  2. Utilize the channels within my Team to organize the modules and topics better and to provide a way to slowly leak out course content to students. I worry that if everything is visible from the beginning, some students will jump ahead. I found a great video to help provide suggestion for this. http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jml__2MNnTs
  3. I also plan on creating an enrichment section to provide a place for students to engage in challenges when they finished the required work.
  4. Tie in Class Notebook more seamlessly with the Team to provide a more organized feel.
  5. Explore more tools that were reviewed within this class and develop some more of my own content that can be utilized within the course to increase learning and engagement.

 

After viewing others courses and presenting my own, I am excited to take what I learned and create an improved product. Feedback is definitely a secret weapon and now that I have it, it’s time to act!

3 Responses

  1. Kelly Z says:

    Devin, I appreciate how you wrote in detail about the feedback that you received. There were a few points where I thought about my own course and how I could organize it better. I like how you are including an enrichment section. Do you think that you could add an enrichment activity to each assignment instead of a separate section? That way, students can work on it as a continuation of what they are doing. Just an idea.

    It’s exciting to see how the feedback has inspired so many people to make changes, or bump up their own courses. Keep up the great work! I look forward to seeing your course.

    • daspinall8 says:

      Thanks for the feedback Kelly. I haven’t fully figured out the enrichment part yet, but I like your idea of housing enrichment activities in each topic. Providing a variety of challenging activities is an important feature of blended learning and helps to meet the needs of the varying academic levels of each student. I hope to get this part right!

  2. Jocelyn Wigmore says:

    I am totally one of those people that hates sharing and always worries about feedback. But then after it is all over I appreciate it and am better for it. It is funny that I struggle with this so much when I am constantly providing feedback to my students and to the kids I coach. I can appreciate your point about leaking out feedback slowly as I would be a student that might get overwhelmed seeing it all at once. However, when we receive the content too slowly it can also be stressful. I am not one to work too far ahead but I like to have the option to get assignments done when I have time instead of cramming it all in at the end. Thanks for the great post!

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