Students respond better to feedback when it's depersonalized.
Personal: Your wording here is unclear
Impersonal: The wording here is unclear.
Personal: Your organization is confusing.
Impersonal: The organization is confusing.
Personal: You made the opposite claim in the previous paragraph.
Impersonal: The previous paragraph made the opposite claim.
I've found that this makes a massive difference, giving students the detachment they need to focus on their writing.
Could you unpack that a bit?
I'm gonna try to do this detachment with my own writing and see if I can't get over my writers block.
@yasha that makes a lot of sense actually. Unfortunately the company I do grading (mostly feedback on essays) for tells us to personalize it and use "you"
I might see how much I can get away with changing the wording there though. I think it would let me give more constructive feedback without having to go overboard on the praise to make up for the perceived negative tone.
Teacher: “You have really, really annoying kids.”
Mother: “Teacher, is that because of me?”
Teacher: "No, they were just brought up completely wrong."
I think it's sound strategy no matter whose work you're editing.
I suspect our approaches are similar. I, too, will use personalizing language in my feedback, especially to emphasize things students are doing well or, as you describe, when offering ideas or suggestions that students should feel free to disregard.
Mostly, I use the personalized approach to bypass the visceral reactions people feel when being told some aspect of something they've worked hard on doesn't work. Students don't feel like failures and they don't feel personally judged.
I think so much depends on context. It would be a mistake to use my examples as absolutes.
I find your approach works extremely well in one-on-one sessions. Having students teach me or "break it down" for me when there can be some give and take is a great way for them to discover ways to strengthen their arguments.
@yasha I think, like you, that the important thing is that their confidence about their ability to write is not destroyed, because then they just give up instead of using feedback to improve.
More and more if I can I'm about allowing rewrites if they want.
Yes! I get that rewrites are a hassle and that not every professor has the bandwidth to accommodate them. Nevertheless, writing is always a process. Our classes should reflect that process.
How many drafts do we go through before submitting our own work? Is it any wonder that students develop high anxiety over writing when they're expected to produce perfection right out of the gate?
@yasha I do this with all my students, and moving to high school I noticed the impersonal phrasing is waaaay more common
Probably because you know you're teaching this to kids for the first time
Most of the high school teachers I work with provide better feedback than peers in academia
College needs to do better
Wonder if requiring people to know something about teaching would help
It definitely wouldn't hurt!
@yasha inspired me to start a conversation on this lol
College profs are often Terrible teachers and that always ground my gears when teaching courses
I agree. With no formal training in teaching, most professors teach the way they were taught. That might seem reasonable were it not that the people who survive the system to become professors generally aren't representative of the students they're trying to teach.
Of course, it doesn't help that teaching well isn't well incentivized at many universities.
@yasha It's a terrible feedback loop
I would have first gen kids panicking in my office over Other classes cause of this situation
It is so harmful for students and pushes out kids
I think it's harmful to professors, too. It's definitely harmful to our disciplines!
I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are. Nevertheless, I can't deny that, for all academia is vilified in public discourse as a liberal bastion, it is, in fact, an incredibly conservative institution.
I can understand that! I suppose what gives me some hope is that sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia are far less evenly distributed than they were when I started as an undergraduate.
That isn't to say those problems aren't pervasive. They absolutely are. Still, if some pockets of academia can be reformed, perhaps there's some hope for the rest as well.
@yasha I experienced it far less in undergrad than in grad school where it was as pervasive as air
So I think seeing it so spread throughout US graduate programs made me very skeptical and I defended this past October
I'd hope it can be reformed but academia as is, with its reliance on adjunct labor and precariousness and the normalization of abusive advisor advisee relationships - I don't see it changing so much as become more exploitative
Right now, I see it as a coin toss as to which direction things will go.
When I started undergrad, my university had only recently lost a Supreme Court case to allow LGBTQ+ clubs on campus and my field was about 60/40 men to women. Now, my field is dominated by women and ally stickers adorn every other faculty office.
Of course, those faculty are decidedly monochromatic so...
Yeah, a coin toss.
I should have worded my post more carefully to say "Students respond better to negative feedback when it's depersonalized."
I tend to make positive comments personal. It helps overcome writing anxiety for students who are nerves all over when it comes to writing.
Still, depersonalizing positive comments is useful when I want students to focus on how they did something well so they can build on it, bypassing the blindness that often comes from a rush of affirmation.
I did that for years. Now most of my assignments are turned in online so it's not really an issue.
It depends on context. Usually, I think it’s fine to personalize positive feedback. It helps build confidence.
When I want to get students to dissect what they’re doing well so they can develop those skills further, depersonalizing positive feedback can help bypass ego responses.
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