How Professors Can Provide "High-Gain Feedback" To Promote Increased Student Performance and Involvement On Weekly Lab Reports and Weekly Journals.

Introduction.

My Physics Classes were required to submit a Weekly Lab Report. These Weekly Reports were to be in a bound notebook, which had quad-ruled paper for graph making etc. The respective class syllabi described, in several pages, how the students were to complete these weekly requirements.

After several years, I discovered that only "describing" in the syllabus, what I was expecting was not sufficient. So in the first classes, I also discuss the purpose of these weekly reports and what they were t accomplish. Also I gave examples of what I was looking for . In addition, the students were shown for their examination, five or so good student Lab Report books from previous years. These books were for one complete semester, and contained my usual grading marks and my written feed back notes. Of course I covered the owner's names and keep real close watch on these books, so none disappeared!! I found that this combined effect of "describing", "telling", and "showing" makes a huge positive contribution to getting these student reports and journals off to a good start.

Providing "High-Gain Feedback" With Professors Lab Report Grades and Comments.

As long as the student was improving steadily each week in their Lab Report performance, I always marked a grade higher than the student should really get! And I just give lots of positive feedback and generally went out of my way to point out the good things each student was doing!! And I especially pointed-out where the student had done particularly well!! If the students work was good, then it's all good. In fact I specifically avoid pointing to anything negative. I figure students (really any biological organism) and only have one emotion at one time! Also, I figured the student can only "find out" what I really "want them to do", is by my providing specific guidance on their own work. Of course this guidance can best be provided through a long series of iterative feed-back cycles on their own work. In general, as long as the student was improving, I gave MUCH leeway. These measures nearly always results in rapid improvement!!

Of course there is the 1/3 of class that is performing way "below the mark". In many ways these students were blind to what is supposed to be done! For the really weak performers, (grade of 6 or less), I give a great big fat ZERO. I avoided mentioning any good parts to their work, and I went out of my way to find the bad parts which I mark accordingly. Then I provide a detailed list of improvements the student must complete in order to get an ok grade. If the students complete this list creditably, then I give a grade higher than they really should get!! And praise them for their efforts, just as if they had done the work correctly in the first place!!! I have found that after several of these "treatments", these weaker students steadily keep on improving! I think there are three reasons for this. 1) The student has been given a second chance and thus does not get mad at the professor! 2) Having to re-do the work is far more of a punishment, than a poor grade! 3) The completion of the "detailed list of required improvements", shows the student the very parts he was missing. And by re-doing, they had essential practice on the very things the student needed to be aware of. This "treatment" nearly always moved the weaker student into satisfactory performance.

In successive weeks, as I handed back to the students their most recent Lab Reports, I gave short pep talks, urging the students to give longer discussions. Also I would urge the students to do extra credit writing, and provide examples. (Any topic that extended the lab, a lecture or event they had attended recently, or any topic that interested them.) Often I would read to the class paragraphs from the best examples of student writing that week. I would give a general pep talk on what I saw happening that was good.

Weekly Journal Writing In Mathematics 118.

My Mathematics 118 Classes, similar to Physics, were required to submit a Weekly Journal. These mathematics students were required write 300 words or more weekly about "The Mathematics I Saw Around Me This Week". (15% credit) This writing was in addition to more than a full load of mathematics reading and home work problems!!! I discovered that the students apparently do not consider all the writing a burden. I didn't get complaints or other forms of objections. On the course evaluations students said this course was just slightly more work than their other courses! I think all this is curious. So the last semester I taught Math 118, as an experiment, I dropped the Journal requirement, all else the same. I especially attended to see if I could notice any changes in class performance. No measurements were done, but by my personal judgment saw the following: What I did discover was generally more dissatisfied, turned-off, more irritable students, and more drop outs. Also I discovered I knew far less personally about each student as an individual and I was much less connected with how they were doing in the math class and school generally. This was the biggest difference, and was quite clear. Students became unknown entities to me, strangers and were harder to talk to in a "one on one" discussion on test grading questions etc. I saw basically no difference as to students' sense of "work load". Student evaluations of me as a teacher were about the same but the level of student complaints in written comments increased.

So why didn't the students see the Journal Writing as "extra work"? Two reasons I can think of. 1) These students generally don't want to "do math", so the journal writing is a way to "get points" the easy way. 2) These student being weak in math, do not really appreciate how math can be a constructive part of their life. The journal writing forced them to realize, by their own observation, how much mathematics is already a large part of their life. This discovery was favorably commented upon by a majority of the students in their journals! They could thus see this usefulness of math already around them, and this "softened up" their resistance to what they were studying in Math 118. This of course greatly improved class attitude and undercut these students' natural resistance to math. I should add the following. The text in this class was "For All Practical Purposes". The mathematics in this book was well presented and its practical content being "everyday useful" was immediately recognized by the student! This was a big help for positive student attitude, since most mathematics these students had experienced to date, they saw "useless".

Lab Report and Journal Grading.

A student who completes well all the requirements gets a grade of 9. Grades can go as high as 12 or 14 if they are unusually creative or insightful. Writing up extra credit paragraphs could always increase their grade They can push up their grade if they just do a lot of writing, or I add on plus 1/2 for every 25 words over 300! Of course the students could, with all this extra credit, increase their semester grade average well over an "A" Grade! We might expect that all this extra credit would lead the student to "slack off" to lower performance at the end of the semester. But I never saw this happen.