Meaningful Feedback

(develop an approach to deliver meaning feedback to students)

My father used to tell me "he who defines the argument, wins the argument." He was an attorney, so, this was much of his life and he imparted it upon me. I think clearly defining how and what things mean gives the reader your perspective on words instead of them defining them for themselves.

This is why in much of my feedback I aim at "what are you trying to say, and how can we make that statement clear?"

a sample of my feedback on a student's final draft.

Often what I saw as a mentor was a student trying to figure out just this thing. What am I saying and am I communicating it well? Everything else is just details. I have found that I tend to focus on structural framing of arguments and the ways to support that argument.

By focusing on the main topic, what works in the argument and what I struggled to grasp is an effective way to give feedback to students. Also framing it as an opinion or my perspective on the writing, it can reframe the feedback as something to consider and not necessarily something the student did wrong.