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12. When receiving feedback from the instruc-
tor for the first time, a student cannot find a final
grade or score on the paper. Instead, the student
can notice the points to be deducted, if there is
no relevant modification or correction to that
specific area in accordance with the rubrics (see
Figure 3). This practice is intended to encourage
the student to control his or her own learning by
making a decision of whether or not a revision
will be pursued. This same process would also
engage students in rethinking and reflecting on
what has been done. The student's engagement
in revisions affords the student with learning op-
portunities as pointed out by a student, “It is nice
how you gave us lots of opportunities to revise
and to correct our work. You helped us to learn
more.” If a student decides not to make any revi-
sion and if revisions made do not meet the crite-
ria, the points deducted at various spots across
the paper will be added up as a final grade of that
paper or project (see #14 below).
13. After receiving the revised work, I re-read
the work and award a grade or score. Yet, students
can still revise their work after the reception of
the graded work from me. Followed by my review
of a second revision made by a student's effort, a
newly readjusted grade or score is awarded, which
is based on the revision status. If the revision fully
meets the criteria, it would receive 60% of the
missing points. For example, if an assignment is
awarded 80/100 in the first review, the readjusted
grade would then be 92 if this second revision is
up to the expectations. The formula is 20 (missing
points) X.60% (the maximum % of the missing
points one can earn provided that the work is in
good quality) = 12 (newly gained points as a result
of the revision), which is then added to 80 points
(the original points earned during the instructor's
second review) = 92. This grading policy works
for the students' ensuing revisions, which may
end when there is neither further revision request
from an instructor nor any revision response from
a student received by the instructor.
14. I write a general summary at the end of each
paper, reporting briefly general positive and nega-
tive aspects of the paper and making improvement
suggestions. Then, I copy and paste this summary
onto an email message to the student (Figures 9
and 10). Meanwhile, I make sure that my specific
and detailed feedback is enclosed as an attach-
ment as well. Additionally, I always remember
concluding the general note with words, such as
“Good Night,” or “Have a nice day!” which was
recognized by a student, “I like getting the overall
comments—the big picture of our assignments. I
enjoyed how polite your closing remarks always
were—“good night” etc.”
15. Generally, there are no clear-cookie-cutter
approaches in communicating with students when
it comes to provide formative feedback. My ex-
periences have taught me that an instructor needs
to be sensitive and responsive to students' written
message while being creative in composing the
messages that are likely to be read by students.
CONCLUSION
Currently, there is a growing demand from stu-
dents for feedback on their performance (Siew,
2002). Today's students not only need more indi-
vidualized support from instructors, but also have
higher expectations than before (Peat & Franklin,
2002). Students expect both timely and quality
feedback (MacDonald &Y Twining, 2002), which
a computer-mediated asynchronous text-based
system alone cannot make happen.
A text-based learning context appears to have
more cons than pros when it comes to the provision
of feedback with the use of teacher immediacy
cues, especially nonverbal teacher immediacy
behaviors. However, by no means does it indicate
that an instructor must completely abandon the
idea. Creatively making the impossible possible
should be the goal on that an instructor sets with
mind and heart. In fact, there are already several
ways to reach the end, such as calling students
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