Why Verbal Feedback Is Important In Assessment- 1 Simple Teacher Tool
Verbal feedback creates a good teacher-student rapport, promotes dialogue, enhances student engagement, and eliminates misunderstandings.
Table of Contents
- What are the benefits of verbal feedback?
- How to provide effective and timely verbal feedback in student assessment?
- Use Mote To Give Immediate Verbal Feedback
- Final Thoughts
Feedback is a crucial part of learning. How will the teachers know if they are achieving the desired learning outcomes? How will the students know if they are working in the right direction? Learning is a process and feedback ensures effective carrying out of this process. Imagine if your teacher or mentor told you where you were right or wrong during each step? Or even during an examination or assessment? How much it would have helped you improve, right?
Verbal feedback is even more effective in student assessment. Verbal feedback creates a good teacher-student rapport, promotes dialogue, enhances student engagement, and eliminates misunderstandings that usually occur during correction of assessment. In this article, I will throw light on the benefits of verbal feedback, the ways to provide effective verbal feedback to your students, and one simple teacher tool to help you.
What are the benefits of verbal feedback?
“Feedback is one of the most powerful tools teachers have in their ‘teaching tool belts’ for guiding learners toward mastery”, writes educator Dr. Catlin Tucker in her blog.
Feedback has immense importance in education. When we tell our students what they are doing right and where they need improvement, they get a sense of reassurance that they are on the right track. Don’t we all need this? Effective feedback motivates teachers as well as students. When this feedback gets a personal touch, then it becomes more productive. That’s why verbal feedback is better than written feedback.
Written feedback may not always deliver its intended purpose. We are able to express our emotions better by speaking rather than writing. The students also get a personal touch when teachers verbally tell them their strengths and weaknesses. This also doesn’t create any confusion that may occur in the case of written feedback to students.
Once I was correcting my student’s worksheet on Math statement sums at home. His statements were grammatically incorrect and didn’t make much sense. I didn’t want to put so many circles around his mistakes. And if I had overlooked these mistakes then he wouldn’t even know about it. So I explained all this verbally to him in the school the next day. But this was just one student and I had 15 others who needed similar feedback. They also had a homework worksheet to be done. If I had provided instant verbal feedback to all of them, they wouldn’t have made the same errors in the homework worksheet.
It is then I realized two things
- Verbal feedback is essential in assessment.
- And it has to be instant.
How to provide effective and timely verbal feedback in student assessment?
Well, I will answer this one by one. Read more to learn the ways to give meaningful and useful feedback to your students. Then I will disclose one simple tool to provide instant verbal feedback.
Tips on giving helpful feedback in assessment.
You should tell your students exactly what and how they are doing right or wrong. Avoid beating around the bush.
Edutopia shares research-based tips on providing effective feedback to students. If a student does addition sums wrong in a class test, point out if they are using an incorrect technique. If the technique is correct but they make mistakes in forward-counting then tell them exactly that. Be as specific as you can. Also, assessment feedback should be prompt. The sooner you tell your students that they are wrong, the better because it gives them sufficient time to prepare and change their learning strategy.
Without further ado, I will tell now you the best free teacher tool to give instant verbal feedback to your students.
Use Mote To Give Immediate Verbal Feedback
Mote is a voice note and feedback app. You can add the mote extension to your browser and record and send audio notes and feedback to your students’ assessments. Mote works on Google Forms, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Gmail, Google Classroom, or any webpage that you are using for assessment. Let me take you through a short tutorial of Mote.
How To Use Mote To Give Feedback On Assessment?
You can use Mote in the following ways:
1. Give Verbal Feedback On A Google Form Test.
You can add verbal feedback to your students’ Google Form responses.
You will find a purple symbol on every question and section.
Add individual verbal feedback to every response.
Click on the Mote icon and start recording your feedback.
You can also check out this sample feedback that I have given to the following incorrect response.
2. Send Audio Feedback On Google Slides.
You can carry out the same process of clicking the Mote Icon to give feedback on a Google Slide.
3. Provide Audio-Verbal Comments On Google Sheets.
Click on the Mote icon in the top right corner.
Select the cell or data you want to comment on.
Now speak and record your feedback.
4. Add Verbal Feedback To Assignments On Google Classroom
When you correct assignments on Google Classroom, you can add voice feedback to them. Click on the Mote icon and record what you want to say.
Final Thoughts
Students need continuous feedback to improve themselves. When teachers give individual verbal feedback, students feel involved in the learning process. Its need is felt even in student assessment. When you explicitly, verbally and timely tell your students about their mistakes, they are able to improve upon them. Similarly, when you tell them that they are right, for instance, in their method of solving division sums, it cheers them up. Try that with your students, if you haven’t yet. Mote lets you engage with your students at each step of their learning and assessment by giving prompt and effective verbal feedback. Don’t just blindly trust me. Try it for yourself and thank me later. I’ve saved you a lot of time, effort, and Motes of course!
👉 Read more teacher tips and strategies:
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