Written Communication Certificate · Module 2 of 3
Feedback and Assessment in Writing
This module covers how feedback works, what research on response shows about how students use your comments, and three practices (minimal marking, screencast feedback, and rubric design) that cut the time you spend responding while helping students learn more from it. Plan on 4 to 6 hours over two weeks: about 3 hours on the activities, the rest reading.
What this module asks you to do
- Compare correction-focused and conversation-focused feedback by what each asks the student to do next. (Sections 1 and 2, Activity 1)
- Rewrite one comment you have given on student writing as a conversation-focused comment. (Activity 1, prompt 2)
- Respond to one student draft by screencast and record the student's account of it. (Activity 2)
- Evaluate a rubric you use against the design principles in Section 4. (Activity 3, prompt 2)
- Revise one rubric criterion so its descriptors state what the writing does. (Activity 3, prompt 3)
- Use screencast response on one assignment in a later course and report what students did with it. (Activity 2, your commitment, and a short follow-up from CWSP near the end of the term)
From Correction to Conversation
Most written feedback in higher education corrects: the instructor finds what is wrong and marks it. Most faculty received feedback this way on their own writing, so the model feels natural. Sommers's research suggests it does little for developing writers.
In her 1982 study, Sommers found that teachers' comments pulled students away from their own purposes and treated a developing draft as a finished text to be corrected. Comments of that kind invite surface changes. Students fix what was marked and leave the argument as it stood. Feedback that asks questions, names patterns of error, and responds to what the writer means gives students a reason to revise the substance.
Responding this way starts from different questions. What is this writer trying to do? What is getting in the way? Which two or three things matter most right now? Those questions put you in the position of a reader working with the writer, and the rest of this module builds on that position.
How much to mark
A paper marked in every line gives the student no place to start. When everything is marked, everything looks equally important, and students struggle to decide what to work on first. Comment on fewer things so students know what to revise.
The Case for Minimal Marking
Richard Haswell's "Minimal Marking" (1983) took up a practical problem. How do you give useful feedback without spending hours on each stack of papers, and without burying students in corrections? Haswell check-marked surface errors in the margin and left students to find and fix the error themselves. Writing teachers have since extended his method into a wider approach to response.
Editing is the student's job. When you correct errors for students, you do the work that would teach them. A check in the margin tells the student a line holds an error, and the student then has to find it, work out what went wrong, and fix it. Students learn more from that work than from reading a correction someone else made.
In practice, minimal marking means four things. Your written comments address substance (argument, evidence, structure, development). Check marks or brief codes handle surface errors. Each draft gets comments on the two or three issues that matter most. Full response waits for the revision. Faculty who work this way tend to spend less time on feedback and to see more revision between drafts.
Tell students what you are doing
Explain to students why you do not correct every error. Some will read a sparsely marked paper as a sign you did not read closely. A sentence at the top ("I focus my comments on the three issues that will most improve this draft") goes a long way toward earning their trust in the method.
Screencast and Audio Feedback
Screencast feedback records the instructor reading a student draft aloud and commenting while the cursor moves through the text. Anson, Dannels, Laboy, and Carneiro (2016) studied this response mode in NC State courses, surveying 141 students and interviewing 17. Students found screencast response helpful to their learning. They also read it as personal, describing a teacher who was present to them and an evaluation they could follow as it happened.
Anson and his co-authors read these responses through facework. A spoken comment carries tone and emphasis, so a student hears how a criticism is meant along with what it says. The format did not demand more of students' time. Most students watched each screencast once or twice, about as long as they spent reading written comments.
Tools include ScreenPal, Loom, and the screen recorders built into macOS and Windows. Open the student's draft, start the recording, and talk through what you see as you read. Share the recording as a link in a comment or by email. Warnock (2008), cited in Anson et al. (2016), reports time savings for instructors who respond by screencast.
Designing Rubrics
Faculty use rubrics often and design them in haste. A good rubric makes criteria visible, grading consistent, and expectations clear to anxious students. A poor one breaks writing into disconnected criteria and rewards students for filling in a formula. Both kinds are common.
Most rubrics treat writing as a set of separate parts (thesis, evidence, organization, mechanics), each with its own score. That structure assumes a weakness in one part stands apart from the others. Experienced writing teachers see otherwise. A weak thesis usually travels with thin evidence and an underdeveloped structure. Some instructors find a holistic rubric, which describes the overall qualities of papers at each level, fits student writing better than an analytic rubric, even though it feels less precise.
When an analytic rubric suits the assignment, design it with care. Draw the criteria from the goals of this assignment. Write each level's descriptor to say what the writing does: "the argument presents clear evidence for each claim" describes a paper, while "lacks sufficient evidence" only names a shortfall. Develop the rubric with a writing specialist or the writing center, give it to students before they write, and revise it after you see what students do with it.
When rubrics help
Rubrics work best for assignments whose criteria stand on their own: complex projects, portfolios, and oral presentations with distinct parts to evaluate. For a focused essay or a lab report in a familiar genre, descriptive feedback often tells students more and represents your judgment more honestly.
Peer Review as Pedagogy
Faculty often doubt peer review. If students do not yet know what good writing looks like, why ask them to judge each other's drafts? The objection assumes the writer is the one who gains. Peer review does the most for the reviewer. A reviewer reads several drafts at the same stage, applies the assignment's criteria to someone else's work, and puts into words what works and what does not. Each of those tasks asks the reviewer to think about writing, and the reviewer brings that thinking back to their own draft.
Peer review needs design. Ask students to "give feedback" with no further structure and you will get comments like "This is good! Maybe add more detail?" Give reviewers specific tasks instead: "Summarize the argument in two sentences." "Identify the three most important claims the paper makes and assess whether each is sufficiently supported." "Mark one sentence per page that seems unclear and explain what confuses you." Tasks like these give the writer comments to work from.
Logistics matter too. Students who review a peer's draft before finishing their own see other approaches to the same problem. Reviewing two or three drafts gives a reviewer a basis for comparison. Reviewing one draft twice, before and after revision, shows reviewers how writers use feedback and where they set it aside.
Activity 1
Feedback Comparison Analysis
Below are three responses to the same student paragraph. One corrects surface features, one addresses the substance of the argument, and one mixes surface correction with a substantive concern buried in the middle. Read all three, then answer the prompts that follow.
Student paragraph (anonymized)
Version A: Correction-focused
"'Has been shown' is passive voice. Rewrite. 'Several studies': which studies? Be specific. The Oxford citation is incomplete. 'Regularly' is vague. How often? 'This suggests' is a weak transition. The conclusion overstates the evidence."
Version B: Conversation-focused
"You're making a big causal claim here, that chocolate might treat depression. Your evidence shows a correlation between eating chocolate and mood. What's your argument for moving from correlation to treatment? That's the gap I'd want you to address in revision. Also, when you cite 'one study,' readers will want enough detail to find it themselves."
Version C: Mixed
"Passive voice throughout. Avoid. The studies you cite need proper citations. Overall the logic of this paragraph is a bit shaky: you move from correlation to causation without justification. Fix the grammar issues first, then think about whether your evidence supports your conclusion."
What a complete response does
- Names what each of the three versions asks the student to do next, with a phrase from each.
- Judges which version leads to substantive revision and gives a reason drawn from Section 1 or 2.
- Quotes or paraphrases a comment you gave a student and rewrites it as a question or a reader’s response.
- Names at least one barrier particular to your course, department, or students.
Prompts marked * need at least one full sentence each to submit the module.
Contribute to the repository
If you rewrote a piece of your own feedback during this activity, colleagues would find it useful, especially alongside your account of why you changed it.
Activity 2
Screencast Feedback Practice
In this activity you record one screencast response to a real piece of student writing from your course. Then you reflect on how it went.
Before you record, set up a screencast tool (Loom, ScreenPal, or QuickTime on a Mac). Open the student's document in a view that scrolls on screen. Skip the script. Screencast feedback works because you think aloud as you read.
- Record a 3–5 minute response to one student draft. Move your cursor through the paper as you read. Start with substance: what the student is trying to do, what is working, and the most important issue to address. Leave the rest for another draft.
- Watch the first 60 seconds of your recording. What do you lead with? Do you start with strengths or problems? Does your tone match how you talk with a student in office hours?
- Share the recording with the student. A Loom link in a comment or an email works.
- Follow up with the student, in office hours or by brief email, and ask one question: what was most useful about the screencast, and was anything confusing?
What a complete response does
- Reports a recording of 3 to 5 minutes made for a real student draft in your course.
- Describes what the recording led with and how its tone compared with your written comments.
- Records the student’s answer to the follow-up question, or states why no follow-up took place.
- Commits to one assignment in a later course, with a course, a draft stage, and an approximate date.
Prompts marked * need at least one full sentence each to submit the module.
Near the end of the term, CWSP will email you one question about how the screencasts went. Your answer completes objective 6.
Contribute to the repository
Your plan for using screencast feedback (which assignments, what length, how you share the link) gives colleagues in your discipline a model to adapt. Keep the recording itself private.
Activity 3
Rubric Audit and Redesign Workshop
Select one rubric you currently use (or have used) for a writing assignment. Audit it against the principles in Section 4, then redesign one section of it.
What a complete response does
- Identifies the assignment, the number of criteria, and the scoring method.
- Answers all four audit questions, each with an example from the rubric.
- Sets the original and revised criterion side by side.
- Writes each revised descriptor as a statement of what the writing does, tied to a goal of the assignment.
Prompts marked * need at least one full sentence each to submit the module.
- Do the criteria come from the goals of this assignment, or from generic writing quality?
- Do descriptors say what the writing does, or what it fails to do?
- Which criteria stand on their own, and which are bound up with one another?
- Would a student reading this rubric before writing know what to do? Or would it only tell them how they will be judged?
Contribute to the repository
Discipline-specific rubrics show faculty in other departments how criteria translate across fields. A rubric from your field, especially one you have tested and revised, gives colleagues teaching similar assignments something to use right away.
Key readings and resources
Three marked ★ are the most essential for the module's frameworks.
- ★ Sommers, N. (1982). Responding to student writing. College Composition and Communication, 33(2), 148–156.
- ★ Anson, C. M. (2015). Habituated practice can lead to entrenchment. In L. Adler-Kassner & E. Wardle (Eds.), Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies. Utah State University Press.
- ★ Anson, C. M., Dannels, D. P., Laboy, J. I., & Carneiro, L. (2016). Students' perceptions of oral screencast responses to their writing: Exploring digitally mediated identities. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 30(3), 378–411.
- Haswell, R. (1983). Minimal marking. College English, 45(6), 600–604.
- Straub, R. (1997). Students' reactions to teacher comments: An exploratory study. Research in the Teaching of English, 31(1), 91–119.
- Elbow, P., & Sorcinelli, M. D. (2006). How to enhance learning by using high-stakes and low-stakes writing. In W. J. McKeachie & M. Svinicki (Eds.), McKeachie's teaching tips (12th ed.). Houghton Mifflin.
- Nilson, L. B. (2015). Specifications grading: Restoring rigor, motivating students, and saving faculty time. Stylus.
Before you submit: four questions about this module
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