Feedback that Matters: Responding to Student Writing in the Humanities
About the Workshop:
The task of responding to student writing as an instructor or TA in the humanities can be challenging. You may feel like students bypass your written feedback to learn what their grade was, or that you are writing feedback as a self-defense mechanism in case students complain about their grades rather than providing actionable comments. In this workshop, we will consider ways to provide better feedback to students on written assignments. Providing effective feedback has a double benefit: it helps students grow as learners and writers in your discipline and it enables you to be efficient as you grade. We will discuss several strategies for responding to student writing and evaluate successful and unsuccessful models of written feedback.
About the Facilitators:
Robin Pokorski is a 7th-year PhD candidate in History. Her dissertation research examines Dominican nuns, community identity, and church reform in late medieval Germany. Robin has acted as a Graduate Teaching Mentor for the Searle Teaching Certificate Program, led Graduate Student Teaching Conference workshops, and participated in other Searle programming. She has taught the medieval and early modern European history survey course and TA’ed for a wide variety of other history courses.
Tyler Talbott is a 5th year PhD candidate in English, studying nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature. Tyler’s teaching experience includes teaching for British surveys, composition courses, and NU Summer Bridge, serving as a Writing Fellow at the Graduate Writing Place, tutoring for the Northwestern Prison Education Program, and participating in educational development initiatives through Searle.