How to leave feedback in an Online Quiz
Learn how to leave effective student feedback
Leave feedback in minutes and not hours
While there are many factors which determine the success of online education and testing the dialog between student and teacher can be argued to be the single most important factor. Our quizzing platform is built around enabling conversations that empower the teacher to quickly and efficiently leave feedback to help the student identify overlooked factors and mistakes. As a teacher the idea of manually marking dozens of quizzes is not particularly appealing, sifting through papers finding and marking questions that require often very similar types of feedback and laborious and repetitive. We simply these steps by suggesting common feedback, showing you only the questions that require feedback, notifying students automatically and doing so in an interface designed primarily for efficiency. It's our belief that if the task of leaving quiz feedback is easier the quality of feedback will improve.
How to leave feedback on your online quiz
Once students have completed your online quiz you can quickly begin to leave feedback and automatically notify students. For this you'll need a quiz with questions you wish to leave feedback on that students have answered and ideally have students enter their email address as part of the quiz (so you don't have to enter it later). When you create your quiz you'll see an option to specify if a question requires feedback. By default we will show only the questions you've marked as requiring feedback but you can select 'All Questions' from the dropdown and leave feedback on quiz questions that haven't had this option set. You'll leave feedback on the quiz within the Dashboard. The following steps describe how to mark your first online quiz:
- Hit the More button in the Dashboard next to your quiz and select 'Marking'
- Next you'll see the Marking list which shows results that have been marked and need to be marked
- Click the pen icon on the first result
- You'll now see the students answers and have a space to provide feedback
- Provide your feedback and hit either Save or Send (if you wish to notify the student)
- Click Next to move to the next quiz response to be marked
Tips to leave effective feedback
Carol Dweck has researched the effectiveness of various forms of feedback on student performance. Dweck a promponent of the growth mindset emphasizes the importance of feedback which praises effort independent of the outcome. In one such study a single line of praise on the effort of the student resulted in kids choosing harder subsequent tests. Underlying the growth mindset is the idea that our brains are capable of change, that not all achievement is the result of innate ability.
First, Dweck gave every child a test that consisted of fairly easy puzzles. Afterward the researcher informed all the children of their scores, adding a single six-word sentence of praise. Half of the kids were praised for their intelligence (‘You must be smart at this’), and half were praised for their effort (‘You must have worked really hard’).
The kids were tested a second time, but this time they were offered a choice between a harder test and an easier test. Ninety percent of the kids who’d been praised for their effort chose the harder test. A majority of the kids who’d been praised for their intelligence, on the other hand, chose the easy test. Why? ‘When we praise children for their intelligence,’ Dweck wrote, ‘we tell them that’s the name of the game: look smart, don’t risk making mistakes.’
The following tips will help improve the quality of test and quiz feedback for your students:
- Establish clear marking criteria that is understood and agreed upon by all markers
- Encourage effort instead of outcome, a single line of praise can have a big impact
- Encourage a conversation and ask students for their thoughts on how to improve
- Notice improvement independent of score
- Keep it concise
- Let students know feedback provide opportunity, not punishment