Dr. Arlene Pincus and Moira Clarkin, both faculty in Walden University’s M.S. in Education specialization in Elementary Reading and Literacy, were awarded the university’s Distance Education Research Fellowship to study how cumulative written feedback can be used as a tool to assist graduate students in developing effective scholarly writing.

Pincus has encountered many students who don’t have faith in their own ability to become better writers and who are discouraged. “Sometimes students express a ‘just take off credit’ attitude as opposed to believing in their power to develop scholarly writing skills,” she says.

Pincus theorizes that some successful undergraduate and graduate school learners may have received little feedback on their writing and editing skills in courses not focused on writing. “But as students become capable of understanding the complex theoretical ideas in graduate programs, they naturally try to communicate more complicated thinking and can profit from feedback that explains suggestions and corrections,” she says.

Pincus and Clarkin have designed a feedback tool for the online environment that they believe will enable students to more easily understand a teacher’s written comments and understand their own progress in improving their writing from assignment to assignment throughout a course. At the same time, they believe it will help instructors track suggestions and corrections and students’ use of this information, thus helping instructors determine what they might suggest for subsequent work.

“Even capable students sometimes submit writing that cannot be rated exemplary. If strictly scored against the rubric, some student writing cannot be rated as graduate-level prose,” Pincus says. “Providing systematic, substantive and timely feedback can help students improve their performance and encourage an inquisitive—rather than passive—response to improving writing by enabling students to understand more completely how writing works.”

Pincus notes that good teachers at all levels provide instruction before holding students accountable for knowing and using ideas. “This feedback system is our attempt to teach before judging and to engage students in thinking about their work with the eyes and ears of people who intend to communicate well with a specific audience,” she says.

Walden’s Distance Education Research Fellowship provides funding to support the direct costs of research that contributes both theoretical and applied knowledge to the growing field of distance education.

March Ponder front page