I’ve begun to look at online writing assessment programs. The one thing that I have noticed is that the feedback is very general such as “May have organization in parts, but lacks organization in other parts”. How helpful is that feedback to a struggling writer? Does it tell him/her what specific parts are organized or what parts are not organized? Does it tell the student what to do to organize the part? Does it provide scaffolding to help the student organize the part? The bottom line is “How likely is it that the student will improve based on the feedback?”
So far the online writing program that I have seen do not give formative feedback. I’m afraid the students using these online writing programs now somewhat know something about what they did without being given the tools to move forward in their writing.
0 Responses to “Online Writing Programs- Not Formative Feedback”