By Dr. Ingrid Bradley

Research supports timely feedback for writing students, yet the notion of what ‘timely’ means, exactly, in terms of turnaround time remains elusive. This blog post presents an exploration into the value of super rapid feedback (SRF) in an asynchronous writing course conducted during a two-course term of entry-level composition course students at Purdue Global. The results of the inquiry became the impetus for further research into what ‘timely’ means to the adult learner and to the instructors who deliver the feedback. A surprise result of the inquiry was the researcher’s own positive pedagogical experience in providing super-rapid feedback (SRF).

Super Rapid Writing Feedback

Time management, and all that goes with it, is the students’ lament and may be why they petrify at the thought of writing and withdraw after the first assignment, if not before. In an all-too-familiar fragile state, students say they do not know how to fit it in. All the while, instructors struggle to make timely assessments. Yet, struggle as it might be, timeliness may just be what the adult time-crunched learner really needs. Of the key themes Patterson et al. (2020) discovered, “quality feedback was related to timeliness of feedback” (p. 1). This is no surprise, as the 24–48-hour feedback window reigns ideal as a potently coveted, yet elusive, scenario. Timely feedback may help students learn best because it considers their adult lifestyle, encourages composition in stages, and creates the kind of communication immediacy that humans need to thrive.

The adult student lifestyle may include jobs, family, and health challenges. Higher education has to fit in so it does not affect survival priorities. There are limited life spaces for learning, so timely feedback honors adult learners, yet it can be a vague notion, an obscure, nebulous concept. In an online, asynchronous, environment, timeliness can mean too much space between assignment submission and feedback. To explore this dynamic, in a highly unofficial experiment during a two-class term, I responded to 100 % of discussion posts within 24 hours, responded to virtual office questions within 12 hours, and gave assignment feedback before Friday instead of the following Monday. During this term I focused on super-rapid feedback and engagement, well-exceeding faculty expectations. The post-term student surveys had a robustness I had not seen before, with an enhanced focus on feedback in the comments section. My feedback content had not changed, but the timeliness was super accelerated.

While the relevance of timely feedback remains known, what is not known is what ‘timely’ means. What is timely for an instructor may be quite a different experience and need for the student. While studies support timely feedback as an essential ingredient for student success, advice on the optimal response time for maximum immediacy in an asynchronous environment is elusive. I have seen faculty guidelines where providing feedback in a week was considered timely. In a week, an adult working student-parent with other challenges has perhaps moved on to more potentially urgent life matters. That window of feedback vibrance may be gone, and that is where a super-rapid response may have worked best.

What almost on-the-spot feedback does is create urgency and importance and encourage process thinking. Then, there are those precious weekends when adult student-parents (or even grandparents) may have the most time to do their higher education and need rapid feedback the most. Thus, I am going to call this the super-rapid approach to student feedback, or SRF.

 With SRF, we anticipate where, when, and how the ultra-busy student can get the best out of feedback. This is what I have come up with:

• Course introductions in CM107 Unit 1: SRF to 100% of students, including stragglers, by the end of week 2.
• General Discussion Responses: 100% SRF each week for each unit for initial prompts; 50% follow-up responses ensuring that all students receive a follow-up response during the term.
• Assignments: ARF within 24 hours of submission and all by Friday of a given unit, instead of the following Monday.
• Bonus: Assignment submissions before Saturday are invited to submit a reworked version for reassessment (better grade and enhanced outcome).       

After a two-course term of SRF, I know the students appreciated their evolving growth as thinkers and writers, my supreme engagement, and the initial course enthusiastic momentum carried for the full 10 weeks. What I did not expect was that their positive reactions served as an energizer, an inspirer, and an impetus for me to keep the momentum. The SRF made me feel quite good. Weekends became my power time to connect with students. They were pounding it out, and I liked being there with SRF to prime that pump and keep it revving.

Yet, faculty have lives beyond the classroom, and I am certainly one of those who live for a day outdoors, playing on wind and water. SRF for more than a two-course term could be torment for the faculty member. But, then again, maybe it will be all right. More research is needed, and that is in progress as I apply SRF to my current four-course term. I have it down now so that spacing it all out and grading every day helps avoid brain burn. While there are few, if any, whole days off, the positive energy I create for the students and myself by honoring the adult learner’s reality becomes the payoff. I simply feel a lot better about being an instructor, thinking that the SRF produces better thinkers, writers, and students, yet further research is needed.

Reference

Paterson, C., Paterson, N., Jackson, W., Work, F. (2020). What are students’ needs and preferences for academic feedback in higher education? A systematic review. Nurse Education Today, 85, 104236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2019.104236