Providing Feedback Opportunities
“Getting different, individualized feedback is essential for the research process” – Dr. Barbara Brown
Background
Dr. Barbara Brown is the Director of Professional Graduate Programs, as well as an instructor of online, blended, and face-to-face courses Werklund School of Education. Courses in the Master of Education (MEd) Interdisciplinary program are divided into specific topics, each with four courses that are taken across several semesters. Dr. Brown helped design a set of four courses about educational research, delivered exclusively online. Students take one course per semester for four semesters. The main objective of the four-course topic on research is for students to engage in various research activities including knowledge mobilization (Jacobsen et al., 2018, Brown et al., 2013, Brown, Dressler, Eaton, & Jacobsen, 2015). Most students in the course are educational professionals in the K-12 system or in postsecondary institutions. They are able to use their experiences to select a research topic or inquiry of interest from their professional practice. Dr. Brown emphasizes the importance of using assessments to promote collaboration and connections, even in online environments.
Strategies
Dr. Brown notes that most of the course design techniques she uses in her online courses mirror those in her face-to-face classes. Her focus is always on action-focused feedback loops. The assessments in the research courses include papers and presentations, and typically are no more than two in each class. This is because the objective is the development and improvement of a research project, which requires consistent attention and revisions. Students are not forced to fit their research process around other assignments, so they can be committed and rigorous for the entire semester. Feedback loops include self-reflection, instructor feedback, peer feedback, and outsider feedback. Peer and instructor feedback in particular are essential elements in the networking element of researching.
Peer Feedback
During synchronous sessions, students break into “studio groups” in Adobe Connect. In these groups, they can share research notes with one another and seek out specific feedback. Groups stay consistent in each semester so that they can help one another with different components of their work without having to spend time understanding the research and ideas beforehand. Peers get to be part of one another’s processes from the start of an assignment to the end. Dr. Brown also uses several other collaborative methods during synchronous sessions, including using Google slides to collaboratively create slideshows, or VoiceThread an online application that allows peers to leave both written and audio comments.
Expert Feedback
Dr. Brown notes that consulting with outsiders and experts is essential, but difficult to achieve when the course is exclusive to D2L. Hearing opinions and perspectives from someone with vital knowledge from outside of the course can make a big difference to a project. Dr. Brown helps her students make connections with other professors or experts in the field, but she also encourages them to look to colleagues, peers, and even their students for input on their work. Feedback from outsiders can help a project remain in context and relevant. It also allows for the generation of unique ideas. Some students are initially intimidated with the prospect of contacting experts that they admire, but soon realize how many people are willing and excited to have conversations with them. Although in some occasions, people will say no, students learn to take risks and reach out. The ability to share work and ideas with people regardless of location is a great strength of online learning, says Dr. Brown.
Outcomes
Many students come out of the final course with a high quality research paper that is suitable for submission to journals for publication. All of the feedback, collaboration, and connections made throughout the four courses contribute to the success of students. Dr. Brown notes that because there is so much ongoing formative feedback from so many different perspectives, students are rarely surprised about the grades they get at the end.
Dr. Brown is a leader in online teaching and learning at the University of Calgary, and is excited to see it being adopted by more instructors and programs. Her advice for instructors new to online teaching is to take advantage of synchronous sessions as an opportunity to build community between students. Online courses are still capable of creating social connections between students, despite them never being in the same physical location. She also notes that you do not have to create all new assessments for an online course. Many assessment techniques and teaching strategies work well in any environment, as long as they are implemented thoughtfully.
References
Brown, B., Dressler, R., Eaton, S. E., & Jacobsen, M. (2015). Practicing what we teaching: Using action research to learn about teaching action research. Canadian Journal of Action Research, 61-78.
Brown, B., Eaton, S. E., Jacobsen, M., & Roy, S. (2013). Instructional design collaboration: A professional learning and growith experience. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching.
Jacobsen, M., Eaton, S. E., Brown, B., Simmons, M., & McDermott, M. (2018). (2018). Action research for graduate program improvements: A response to curriculum mapping and review. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 82-98.
Additional Resources
Mazur, A., Brown, B., & Jacobsen, M. (2015). Learning designs using flipped classroom instruction. Canadian Journal of Learning Technology, 41(2), 1-26. https://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/26977 (Article that Dr. Brown co-authored with a student as a result of work accomplished in the research courses)
