Online supervision and feedback

Summary

Feedback and supervision form the core of a pedagogical practice – to promote development in others. But supervision and feedback often mean a great workload for teachers. However, the workload can be reduced while providing very good conditions for good quality in the feedback. The key to this is, for example: 

• good assessment criteria that point out what is to be fed back and how (a language common to the students)
• the use of digital media where the form of feedback / guidance and accessibility can be increased.
• to utilize the student collective in a way that benefits all parties

In cases where interaction fails in online education, we are often quick to see it as a matter of missed, late or incorrect feedback. Here it may instead be symptoms of unclear planning or instructions. From research, we can see that an important key lies in the preparatory work with planning and structuring that is more valuable than being available and active in emails and forums (dealt with under the theme ”Independent and motivated students”). 

Supervision – practical guidance 

In an online education, the possibilities for variation in the forms of supervision increase with the support of digital media. The framework for the tutorial probably takes place in real-time meetings in Zoom or similar. However, these can be developed to sometimes be done in groups for everyone’s learning, but can also be supplemented or to some extent replaced with supervision dialogues. 

With oral recorded comments before real-time guidance, the students’ positions are moved forward. Students appreciate receiving oral comments, either separate or comments that post the text around certain parts of text comments, for example. With a screen recording program, time is saved when you can point to the student’s / students’ documents and comment on them. The students can in turn listen several times. 

With recorded comments on inserted comments in documents, you can free up time for supervision conversations away from what the supervisor actually refers to. Stripped-down comments in text are orally framed in tone and development and often appear more benevolent and developing than their stripped-down short text format. More comments are then already processed or the students have ready-made arguments with them. In this way, the product also takes on a character of being under constant development and not something that must be ”defended” in the tutorial. 

Feedback – practical guidance 

Where in an educational situation / course that feedback should be given is important in terms of what form it can / should be done. Research shows that students often do not understand the feedback they receive, but also that it is taken more seriously in online education than campus education. Anonymous examinations can make it difficult to get the right feedback. 

Developing good assessment criteria, using digital technology, utilizing the student group and getting more communicative feedback are important areas for development. Being able to provide feedback is also a skill our students need to be trained in, which is why a meta-perspective on feedback sometimes needs to be represented in courses. 

Expectations, requirements and goals can differ between supervisor and student and therefore it is important to discuss these points before starting supervision and work together for a common agenda. 

Supervising is very much about moving the work forward and creating a structure. A simple and good tool for this is the booking function in Mymoodle where the responsibility is transferred to the student. This is especially helpful in situations where you supervise several students at the same time. In this function, it is also possible to document the supervision opportunity.