Within Creating a New Vision for Public Education in Texas, the importance of feedback is emphasized. Ultimately, students use feedback from assessments to self-monitor and understand their learning progress and to set goals for further learning. And, the district provides supports to schools for “scoring” more authentic assessments tasks such as projects, written compositions, presentations, etc. including supports such as collaborative grading time, rubrics, criteria charts, digital scoring tools, etc.
III.c Assessment should be used primarily for obtaining student feedback and informing the student and the teacher about the level of student conceptual understanding or skill development so that the teacher has accurate information to consider for designing additional or different learning experiences.
Two digital tools that may be used as a platform for integrating feedback within the secondary English classroom are Doctopus and Goobric, in conjunction with Google for Education.
According to Coppell High School Digital Learning Coach, Brooke Sims, the combination of the two tools improves functionality and allows for networking within and among classes of students. Explained in this Sway presentation, Ms. Sims shares the steps for the student perspective:
- Students receive a shared Google folder that will be populated with feedback from peers (invitation to collaborate).
- Students receive a shared template, created individually to capture each student’s written composition (invitation to edit).
- Students receive a shared spreadsheet that includes all student work links (invitation to view).
- Students use Goobric to provide feedback to peers (numerically based on a rubric, written feedback, and audio comments). This feedback is automatically populated at the end of the receiving student’s written composition.
- Students access feedback provided by peers to consider when editing and revising their own written composition.
Doctopus allows teachers to automatically create and share individualized copies of a Google Doc or Template. Doctopus is used during the design phase of lesson planning to set up the tools prior to utilization with students.
To be used with the Doctopus, the Goobric web app enables flexible, efficient rubric-based grading of Google Drive resources (Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Folders, etc.).
The Google Slides presentation below from David Doherty (and elaborated upon within his Blog) provides step-by-step explanation for using Doctopus with students.
Ms. Sims shared her thoughts regarding the benefits of utilizing Goobric and Doctopus with students:
The utilization of the Goobric Google extension and Doctopus add-on made it possible for all learners in AP English III course at Coppell High School to provide and receive personalized audio and written feedback. Walls were removed when learners were given access to their peers writing outside of their class period and they were even acquainted with learners in the same course with different instructors. This extension/add-on combination requires a one-time set up and results in the creation of the ultimate work flow, fulfills a need for various perspectives and immediate feedback from peers and educators.
To keep up with her work in instructional technology, follow Ms. Sims on Twitter: @dlcoachbrooke.