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Reviewing Reports: Training Writing Reviewers
39 Plays23 days ago
In the season 3 finale, Dr. Jill Fennell sits down with returning guest Dr. David MacNair and new guest Dr. Caitlin Kelly. The three discuss the importance of 'training the trainer' and ensuring graduate TAs and communication center tutors have the tools they need to give feedback to the students they work with.
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Show Notes and Timestamps:
- 00:43 Introduction to guests
- 01:00 Introduction to conversation about training writing reviewers
- 01:57 How to train the trainer and give constructive feedback
- 03:14 Distinction between grading and feedback
- 09:17 How to approach talking to GTAs and Tutors about what they need to know to give feedback on a report or project
- 15:54 Helping GTAs and Tutors to understand the importance of audience when helping others with their communication
- 21:54 Difference between client/user focused writing and instructor focused writing
- 26:48 How to explain how GTAs and Tutors should make clear what major problems are vs other major issues in writing
- 37:01 Advice for peer reviewers
- 44:02 Advice for new GTAs and Tutors before they meet with their first students
- 47:18 What should GTAs tell students when they’re encouraging them to come to the communication center?
- 51:04 Wrap up and thanks
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Episode edited by Lee Hibbard.
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Transcript
Introduction to Season 3
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to Season 3 of Communication Mechanics. I'm Jill Fennell, Web Chair in Communication Skills at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and this season is all about communication across professional growth.
00:00:24
Speaker
How engineers build skills to navigate job fairs, public speaking, leadership, internship, and providing useful feedback. Let's get started.
Teaching Communication to Engineers
00:00:42
Speaker
Today we have a returning guest, Dr. David McNair, Director of Laboratory Development at the Woodruff School. Welcome back, David. Thank you. And we also have Dr. Caitlin Kelly, the Director of the Writing and Communication Center.
00:00:58
Speaker
Welcome. Thank you. Today we'll have less interview style and more of a conversation. i wanted to talk to you two specifically because you have very similar and yet completely different obstacles in front of you in your roles.
00:01:13
Speaker
You both have to take students, be they GTAs or be they tutors. who are a specific field and make them do something that's not in that field. So David, for you as the director of our laboratories here in our laboratory classes, you teach a lot of our masters and PhD DTAs here in mechanical engineering, how to grade written reports.
00:01:40
Speaker
And Caitlin, as the director of the writing and communication center, You have tutors who I believe are from all levels of education, undergrads, graduates, and postdocs?
00:01:52
Speaker
um Undergraduates and our postdoc faculty tutors. Okay, great. i would like to talk to both of you today on how you help train the trainer. How do you help onboard people who aren't used to having to do these tasks?
Onboarding Trainers for Feedback
00:02:08
Speaker
And, you know, I think this this is highly valuable to people who find themselves in the situation. But I also think this conversation is valuable to anyone who needs to do peer review. I was going absolutely. A couple of semesters ago, we actually started a formal three-credit hour tutor training course, which isn't just a tutor training course. It's also sort of an upper-division thinking about writing course, and that's exactly what we sell it for to all students who may just be looking to learn more about writing. It's it's about feedback.
00:02:36
Speaker
No matter what job you're going to be in, you're going to be asked to give peer feedback to your colleagues, and it's harder to do than you think. Yeah, and say, when we're talking about how do you grade somebody for a laboratory application, you know everybody thinks it's only the technical that we have to care about. But the reality is, in our courses, it's a writing course being disguised as a technical course. There's a lot of engineering judgment the students are having to learn, but TAs, when they come in, I think that's the biggest thing they're surprised about is they have to learn how to communicate effectively themselves and then have to learn how to teach somebody else how to effectively communicate for those students to actually be successful.
00:03:14
Speaker
We've talked about feedback, but I think it's really important to talk about the distinction between grading and feedback, because and know you have very different needs whenever it comes. Well, David, your GTAs give feedback as well, but I know that the communication center really stays away from the idea of grading.
Feedback vs Grading
00:03:33
Speaker
The important thing to think about here is context. And when you come to a writing or communication center, Um, or really just anyone outside your area of expertise, right? As a reader, you have to understand that they aren't coming with the same knowledge and assumptions you are.
00:03:48
Speaker
And sometimes you need that kind of context. Sometimes you need readers in the field who know exactly the task you've been given, how it's going to be evaluated. Sometimes that can be really helpful.
00:03:59
Speaker
But the reality is in most professional work, right? We're not writing for audiences of people just like us. There will be other readers of these documents who don't share our expertise, who maybe are adjacent to our field or in our field, but haven't actually practiced it.
00:04:15
Speaker
I think about like an engineering, right? Oftentimes you move into a finance or executive role. You haven't actually done the engineering in a while. You're familiar, but you're not living it day to day. And so actually getting someone outside the context is really important.
00:04:28
Speaker
The trick at a writing center on a campus though, is that that distinction is not as clear as it in the workforce. And so.
Communication in Engineering Labs
00:04:36
Speaker
we cannot give grading feedback because we don't have that context we're not the professor we don't want to pretend to be the professor and it gets tricky too when it's a client-based project in a classroom so we really make it clear our tutors are very clear when they talk to our student clients about they can't wade into that they because they don't know they don't have that context but what they can offer is to be that smart curious reader who has
00:05:03
Speaker
similar background and expertise and can maybe ask some good questions that'll get that brighter thinking. Yeah, I'd say even in the lab standpoint, if I could just not have to do grading, that would be awesome.
00:05:16
Speaker
it would be it It would be fantastic. if i Just give me super motivated students who want to learn the content just for the sake of learning the content and that's it. Awesome. I would love to focus only on providing good feedback. you know The reality is we're sitting in an academic unit, we have to provide a grade at the end,
00:05:30
Speaker
both as a way that students can differentiate one another, but also as a motivating factor for the students. That said, when we're training the trainers, teaching them how to give a grade is probably the smallest component of what we do.
00:05:42
Speaker
Teaching them really how to think about communications, how to teach somebody how to communicate effectively is way more difficult, takes way more time.
Writing for Diverse Audiences
00:05:50
Speaker
ah So this is something this distinction between feedback and grading is something I've thought a lot about because of like eight years of my career, I've been in roles where I've both been teaching in the classroom.
00:06:01
Speaker
I've also been a tutor at the same time for different students. And you really have to switch gears. You have to consciously and intentionally think, okay, Here I'm grading here I'm getting feedback and the result of that, though, has been that I do much more feedback in my own classes with my students.
00:06:18
Speaker
I think of grading as a very small part of what I do, because for me, the distinction and I talked about, especially with our postdoc tutors who were maybe entering the situation for the first time we talk about that grading is really about evaluating did you meet the course outcomes.
00:06:33
Speaker
hey That's something that you're doing from the instructor standpoint to ensure that your course has accomplished the goals that the curriculum says it is. Feedback much more expansive.
00:06:43
Speaker
They are related. If you get a lot of feedback from a lot of people, there's a high, high chance you're going to meet those course outcomes. But grading is really narrow in looking at a specific metric.
00:06:55
Speaker
Feedback is that more general It's about is this document effective? Does it do what you want it to do and how effectively and what else can we do? So it's really focused. We use that term effectiveness and that's something I was a postdoc here as well.
00:07:10
Speaker
That is ah the vocabulary that has been most helpful that I picked up here at Georgia Tech. We're not thinking about is this good or is it right? We're thinking about is it effective?
Understanding Audience Needs
00:07:19
Speaker
Which is honestly, that's a lot of the same approach that we try to use in the labs. It's when we are teaching a student, we want the student to be the most effective communicator, the most effective engineer that they can be.
00:07:30
Speaker
What is the thing that I can tell that student, the couple things that I can tell that student without getting them completely bored and no longer listening to me that will get them moved to the next step the best way?
00:07:41
Speaker
Right. I mean, realistically, a good communication doesn't exist. It's always situational. That's why it is really more appropriate to talk about effectiveness for a particular audience, for a particular need, than to even bother with notions of good or bad.
00:07:56
Speaker
Absolutely. And that's the challenge. And again, something we talk about in our tutor training courses, the difference between learning to write and learning math or science. Because our students are coming ajo to Georgia Tech with all the tools they need to be good communicators. They know what a paragraph looks like. They know what thesis statement is.
00:08:13
Speaker
They know what an essay should look like. Maybe they don't execute it a hundred percent all of the time, but then we don't need to teach them those basics. What we do have to teach them is how do you apply that knowledge in a totally new context you never imagined?
00:08:27
Speaker
And they're constantly getting that Georgia Tech. And I think that's what's so hard is like, well, there's nothing else. There's no nothing else in a textbook thing need to learn. But I have these crazy situations in all my different classes. Right. That act of transfer can be really difficult the first time.
00:08:42
Speaker
David But i'd say that is doubly so when you're talking about the train the trainers is because now i'm not only talking about the context of one student and exactly the problem that they're trying to face right David Kasher, need to now cover all of the different students that this trainer is going to be seeing and now, how do I give them the kind of tools to think about.
00:09:00
Speaker
understanding the context that the student is trying to address and then giving the feedback is appropriate to that. So it's almost like if you have the small version of the problem that I'm interacting with a single student, it's now at least three or four times more difficult with the the trainer, what you have to teach the trainer to do.
00:09:16
Speaker
Thinking about the act of training the trainer and the resources that we need to give them, I think we can all agree that it starts from understanding what is needed, understanding what's going on.
00:09:29
Speaker
So how do you approach talking to your GTAs or your tutors on what they need to know to give feedback on a report or project?
00:09:42
Speaker
And so really standard best practice in writing centers is you always open with a conversation with the student. And part of that is just to get the student, you know, kind of oriented to where they are, make them feel comfortable. You know, we are not evaluators. Again, it's really about establishing that role. We're not here to judge or evaluate. We're here to help you assess your project and improve it.
00:10:03
Speaker
But that conversation is also about gathering context because we don't have any of that. We, Hopefully, you know, at most we have an assignment sheet or some guidelines, maybe some feedback from someone, maybe feedback from from a professor um that we can look at to kind of figure out what are the expectations, what is the context. So we have to build that. And usually we train our tutors to spend 10 minutes doing that.
00:10:27
Speaker
There's certain things they're looking for, the assignment guide, any sort of just asking the student how this is going, what they feel about it would be a ah good starting point because we also, you know, we're we're helping them meet the goals of their assignment.
00:10:41
Speaker
But we're also want to be aware of and and acknowledge how they feel about this because writing is personal, even if it's technical, a lot of people feel don't have a lot confidence.
00:10:52
Speaker
So we also want to take, you know, keep in mind how are they feeling about things? And then we kind of triage it. It's really, I don't love that metaphor, but it is helpful to some extent. It's triage. So an experienced tutor and our tutors get very good at this very quickly.
00:11:06
Speaker
is to take all this information in and start prioritizing and figuring out where do we spend our time.
Scenario-Based Learning
00:11:11
Speaker
Right. If the student is not that confident, it and might be that they're not that confident and understanding what it was they were actually supposed to do.
00:11:18
Speaker
yeah and I would totally agree with what you're saying. i think we, in a laboratory context, especially in many of the technical domains, we have a little bit of an advantage because we know exactly what problem the students are facing.
00:11:29
Speaker
Now, one of the things that we didn't have for the longest time, and I think our writing program and Jill for kind of bringing it, was providing a lot more of the context of what is the job role that the students are in.
00:11:39
Speaker
Because you can hand somebody technical data and there could be 20 or 30 different ways that you would want to talk about that depending on who your audience is and what the the real need is. so We actually have to put the trainers, the TAs in our case, we have to put them into a particular role and a type of interaction with our students so that they know something about the client needs and therefore what the deliverable is supposed to achieve and then can have a conversation with the student. And then that's where it gets into exactly what you're saying about that conversation. What is it that you want to communicate? Because almost always the student is going to start with a, well, first I did this. I turned this dial. I got this reading and this number, which is not what the the end goal is going to be. That's not what the customer wants to see.
00:12:21
Speaker
Or at least in in the way that we have designed our labs. Exactly. One of the things that i know I've spoken with the Writing and Communication Center about before when it comes to technical reports is that this is a sub-genre of reports, but under this sub-genre are all different other kinds of genres and expectations. So in one class on campus,
00:12:42
Speaker
Teachers might expect their technical reports to be somewhat like chronological. Like, I'm just checking see that, you know, you did this and I'm just going to check that off. But that is why it is so critical to know what the context is, what the expectations are, because only by knowing those,
00:13:02
Speaker
can really really define what effectiveness means. um So I know in the classes that you lead, David, there's been a lot of work done on defining that context and helping the trainers understand that context.
00:13:16
Speaker
And that is really the only way that they're able to give good advice.
Effective Feedback Strategies
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And by understanding what is it that I'm trying to tell a client? what ah What outcome am I trying to achieve?
00:13:28
Speaker
Even understanding that vocabulary, you have to spend time to teach the TAs to think that way. rather than that Because the tas they were just students themselves, and they didn't necessarily ever learn this directly.
00:13:39
Speaker
and so You have to teach them that there is even this vocabulary to think about different kinds of reports that are anything different than, i write a number here, I provide a graphic, and you're just supposed to understand it.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, think that when we're working with TAs or tutors, it's really teaching them how to think in different ways. Right. And that's something we talk about, you know, in first year writing as well is to be able to review your own work, you have to get out of your own perspective.
00:14:07
Speaker
That's really hard to do and there is a limit to how much we can do that, which is why TAs and tutors and other people who can get feedback are so important. Yeah, like as an example, I think we spend, what, four hours as a single session before the semester even starts and then we'll spend about two to three hours almost every week doing TA training. A large part of that is just trying to have the conversations with the TAs to model that so that they are able to have effective conversations with the students.
00:14:35
Speaker
David, sometimes I know you get GTA's who have taken this course before because they were winter students as undergrads and sometimes you get students who are from any number of universities.
00:14:48
Speaker
When they haven't taken the course before, what do you think are the most important things that they need to understand about our writing expectations to be able to give good feedback? One of the biggest pieces is that we have a scenario that we're putting those students into that a lot of times doesn't exist in a lot of other areas.
00:15:07
Speaker
And so- In a lot of other labs. A lot of other labs, a lot of other universities, some do. um But a lot of times that's one of the biggest points that we'll have for students that are coming from other universities versus those that took our direct classes.
00:15:18
Speaker
it's there's There's a scenario, they're supposed to exhibit a certain role, they were Working as a lower level engineer in this company, working for the TA who was this senior level engineer, and then there's an external client, just that structure ah is probably a bit more unique to the way that we run our laboratory courses.
00:15:39
Speaker
And so students that have been through that, they're just naturally, they're moving up to now they're a senior engineer, they're providing that level of feedback. That said, it's, you know, even for students coming into it, trying to learn how to think in that context is still particularly difficult.
00:15:54
Speaker
Let's talk about the importance of audience for a little bit. How do you get your tutors or GTAs to understand the importance of the audience when helping others with their communication?
00:16:07
Speaker
On the lab side, we start with the structure of the assignment in the first place, and the structure of the lab. You are handed a device, or you're doing some kind of testing on behalf of a client, and you start it with the scenario.
00:16:19
Speaker
And honestly, a lot of the the communication feedback is happening one-on-one while the students are still in the lab, where you're you're asking them to verbally explain what it is they're doing, why it is that they're doing. That scenario really helps them to then understand, why am I writing this report in particular way?
00:16:35
Speaker
Because it's hard to write a report where you can show your own voice if all you're doing is reflecting numbers. But if I can understand what the need of a client is and the expectations and how I can solve that client's problem, now I actually have something I can sink my teeth into as a communication skill.
00:16:52
Speaker
Again, because we are outside that class context, we're having to get that information from what the student brings in. But that said, you know, just thinking about audience in general, that also part of what we teach again in the first year writing and technical writing courses, I know is like thinking about writing for your reader, not for yourself.
00:17:14
Speaker
Right. Again, getting out of that perspective as a writer where of course this makes sense because you have all the information in your
Verbalizing Ideas to Enhance Writing
00:17:21
Speaker
brain. The reader cannot read your mind. They, they don't know, they can't connect the dots.
00:17:27
Speaker
And so, you know, no matter what specific audience you're thinking about, right, it is that that explaining it, and I think that's a great part of a tutoring session, or whether you're talking to a TA a or your professor about something is that person can ask you questions that force you to respond and prove to yourself, right, that you know what you're talking about.
00:17:49
Speaker
How do you train your tutors to help students over this sort of cognitive leap here, to help them understand audience perspective better and empathize with audiences more and try to write reader focused writing?
00:18:06
Speaker
I mean, think we may not think about it quite as explicitly as we would in the classroom. But again, those asking those questions and getting a student to verbalize things. One of the things I've noticed my career, particularly think working with more technical projects and you know students in fields is that there's this notion that writing is the final final step, right? I've done all the thinking, I know everything, I just and just have to write it up, that write it up culture, which I totally understand.
00:18:35
Speaker
But at the same time, that really, it hides all the work of communicating, right? And so when you start to verbalize things, whether it's presenting your research, that's how we mostly verbalize our work, but also networking, just talking through ideas in your lab.
00:18:51
Speaker
The talking is really important and we find that like students don't realize how important that is. Right, they might come in and want to just push their report towards you and and get something written back, but that's not as helpful. And the number of times, two things tend to happen in tutoring sessions, and again, our we train our tutors to look for these moments. as One is when you get the person talking,
00:19:13
Speaker
they start to learn, like they'll have this moment where they're like, oh yeah, when I say it out that makes sense, right? Or they'll talk themselves into the answer to the question. right so if they've been told, you know, like, what's the point of that data there?
00:19:28
Speaker
And then they'll explain It's like, but that needs to be in the report. But then the next part of the struggle is, well, now I need to write it in like a scholarly research way. Not realizing that actually you're an expert enough in the field right now, the way you verbalize this is actually very polished.
00:19:47
Speaker
Right. Literally just put it in there. So oftentimes we'll tell, we we work with a lot of grad students in the STEM fields in like dissertation level writing. And the number of times we say, Hey, could you just record yourself talking? Let's let's record this.
00:20:01
Speaker
Turn on dictation on your computer because you're actually, you're thinking, you're coming up with better ways of expressing things. and it's
Iterative Feedback in Labs
00:20:08
Speaker
not that you don't have an answer to that question that we're asking about.
00:20:11
Speaker
What is that figure showing me? Yeah. You have that answer. You just haven't put it in the paper yet. You're not thinking about your audience and you're thinking about getting all that information on out of your head onto the paper. and I think it's also what is the structure of the information for the person who's reading the report that tends not to be thought of. and This is a challenge that we even see a lot with ah trying to train our TAs is you know whether it's a student or even the TA, they're going through a laboratory experience.
00:20:38
Speaker
They get so hyper-focused on the data. And then it's just this idea of, well, as long as the data is somewhere on the page, then the reader can figure it out. I've done my job. If I could sit down with two different reports and one of those reports, I need to spend an hour trying to understand what the heck is going on. And the other report, I can read it in five minutes. I understand the main conclusions and I can go on with my day.
00:21:00
Speaker
One of those is the person I want to pay $200,000 and the other person is the one I want to fire. It's like there's a huge difference where the content of the report all of the data collection, the analysis, all of that could be identical between the two, but the fact that I didn't need to spend an hour of my time in order to understand it is incredibly valuable.
00:21:19
Speaker
I can't tell you the number of times I've had students ask me, how do I say da? And i look at them and say, just like that. And it's because they were saying it to my face instead of a white screen in front of them.
00:21:32
Speaker
And just getting them to visualize the audience, I think is the first step, but we can, we do even better than that. And giving them audiences to analyze and having them ask, how does this person want to be able to read this report? How does this person want to be able to use the information from this report?
00:21:53
Speaker
Do you talk to your tutors or GTAs about the difference between Client user focused writing versus instructor focused writing? i mean, that is something again, and when our tutors are are asking about the assignment, gathering information about the context, that is something we are looking for, right?
00:22:11
Speaker
Because sometimes a report will be just to prove that you you can kind of copy and model a model of a report. That's totally fine. That serves a different purpose, though, than something that's client facing.
00:22:23
Speaker
And so, yeah, absolutely. We take that in mind because oftentimes that's determining what's effective, what the the level they need to meet again, because we think about grading is tied to outcomes.
00:22:34
Speaker
The outcomes for those two situations are very different. And so we do want to keep that in mind and we do sort of tailor our advice to that. um you know, maybe it's not as an expanse of a conversation because we do recognize, okay, this is the bar. You've met the bar.
00:22:50
Speaker
I'm sure the next assignment will raise that bar, right? Because part of a lot of what we want to do too is make sure that students aren't overwhelmed. mean, again, we don't have necessarily the technical knowledge, but what we do know a lot about is how difficult it is to write and how difficult it is to get out of your own perspective.
00:23:08
Speaker
And also how difficult it is have to go through version after version, right? And keep tinkering with it. And then to think you fully understand and go, nope, actually your reader doesn't know this.
00:23:21
Speaker
So you need to go back and rewrite. So a lot of what we're doing is helping them manage the process. They're getting the technical feedback and we're helping them manage what they do with that and figure out the
Training for Context Understanding
00:23:32
Speaker
priorities. Where do you even start?
00:23:34
Speaker
Our students hear a lot about what they need to do, rightfully so, right? That is how you get better is you get critique, but they get a lot critique. But critique isn't useful unless you know how to process it. and So our tutors are kind of doing that bigger picture work of helping them process this, run it back through their heads, and then run it back onto the paper, right? um it's it's Which is challenging.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I'd say in in our particular context in labs, because I tend to tend to work with junior level, senior level students, a lot of times they've had a lot of that practice of I'm writing something specifically for an instructor, I'm not putting necessarily the effort into translating that to a different kind of audience.
00:24:13
Speaker
and so We end up focusing a lot more with training the trainer, training the TAs, is a lot more focused on okay always force the conversation back into what is the context? What is it that you're trying to communicate? What's most important for your audience?
00:24:26
Speaker
um often you know all ah Tutors will often say something like, you know so i understand they'll ask a question about some data or they'll ask a question about some method methodology or something. They'll say,
00:24:40
Speaker
Okay. I see what, you know, this student will explain what's required. Say, okay, I see that. But just so you know, in the future, you might actually need to do a little bit more here. um Especially we're talking about the difference between like a method section, methodology section or something. We'll say there's other options in other situations. So that's why I asked this question, but don't worry about it for now. Right.
00:25:01
Speaker
um So that happens a lot, but you know, those are, those are kind of, don't really love the phrase, but teachable moments, right? They're teachable moments where. You can kind of where you're talking about audience, even though it doesn't apply at this specific moment because you noticed it and you've seen this happen before and you just want the students to know, know, this is an example of where you have a choice to make. You're making the right choice for this particular project, but that's not necessarily going to be the right choice for the next project.
00:25:28
Speaker
Well, and I think one of the areas that we sometimes break our students' minds is when we tell them, okay, you're writing a single report, but you have multiple audiences in that single report. So one of those audiences is going to really focus on certain sections of the report and they're going to stop reading. they're not going to read anything beyond that.
Prioritizing Feedback Areas
00:25:44
Speaker
They still, you need to make sure that they got everything they needed from, you know, in our case, we have a structure of, introduction ah methods or methodology depending on which course you're in and Then you've got all of your results, your data processing, your analysis, and you've got conclusions.
00:25:59
Speaker
Well, if I have somebody that's a higher level executive in my company, more than likely they're just going to be reading the introduction. Maybe they have some technical knowledge and they read some of the methodology or methods and then they'll read the conclusion, but they're not going to read the analysis in the middle. They're going to trust that that is accurate.
00:26:16
Speaker
But that same report might then be channeled to the senior engineering team and that engineering team is absolutely going to dive through all of the analysis and then maybe even give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the management team to say, yeah, you can trust what the report is saying, but very different audiences that have to understand if I wrote everything only in such a way that the senior engineering team could understand it is not particularly useful as a document to the senior management team. and In fact, those senior engineers are now going to have to go rewrite all of that content to give a memo to their higher execs.
00:26:48
Speaker
How do you explain to your trainers how they should make clear what the major problems are versus some other things that they should be aware of?
00:27:00
Speaker
Most commonly we we're talking, you know, have a seat having a synchronous conversation with students either in person or by video. We do have a written feedback appointment option where we just give that feedback on the document and return it. So that's a little bit differently, but actually doing those appointments has helped us with the verbal feedback, which I can say more about. But basically, I mean, what it our system, we're very systematic about it.
00:27:23
Speaker
When a student comes to meet with us, they have they sit down if it's in person, they sit down with the tutor, They share their assignment. Conversation happens. At the end of that appointment, they get a client report email to them, which is a summary of what was discussed. And oftentimes, if there were resources that were mentioned, they'll be linked.
00:27:39
Speaker
But that's where our tutors can break it down. they They might focus on little bits and pieces of the document in their conversation, and the student can do notes and things like that. But it's in that client report that our tutors summarize that conversation. and That's where they can prioritize and say, okay, now these are the, as we talked about, these are the two or three things that I think you should really focus on in the next week as you work on this.
00:28:01
Speaker
And
Iterative Feedback for Growth
00:28:02
Speaker
so reinforcing that, because oftentimes that's kind of analysis of the conversation too, right? um And so that also helps to put that in writing for something the student can come back to. That's really important to have that written.
00:28:15
Speaker
And I think it's also important to train our GTAs or our tutors, not just to tell them, not just to tell students what the problem was and that it was a significant problem, but why it was a significant problem.
00:28:31
Speaker
but As you become a teacher, you come to appreciate that people don't make mistakes on purpose. They make mistakes because they thought they were supposed to do it that way. Or they have limited time.
00:28:41
Speaker
Right. There's a tendency when you're just giving feedback and writing on a to turn on track changes and just make so many notes in the text, show how you can do something differently.
00:28:54
Speaker
and One thing in writing centers, that's very fun right for for faculty to do. That's our job right because we know that context, we can do that kind of work and that's really valuable coming from us. For tinders though, we we have ah in writing centers, we our best practice is to keep our hands off the document. right Because ultimately all this is about the writer's choice, right? They get to make the choice. They have a range of options to choose from.
00:29:20
Speaker
Some are more effective than others, but ultimately it's up to them. We want them to have that agency in power, but that's good for us in giving feedback because it keeps us from hyper-focusing on those little things. And it keeps us focused on explaining why things don't work.
00:29:37
Speaker
Right. Um, and so. when we do written feedback, we do predominantly marginal comments where we will highlight something and say, here's why I think going on here. Here's why it's not working for me. Sometimes that comment also has a but, if this is the case in your assignment, least ignore that because it doesn't apply. right Back to understanding that ah that context. and so i mean I think especially for faculty who tutor, this is I know for me it was another of our tutors I've talked to have the same experiences that
00:30:09
Speaker
that's that jump between grading and feedback, right? Is you're more focused on why it doesn't work or why it works as opposed to just the fact that it does or doesn't. And so so that's why when we give feedback, we we always do a summative comment.
00:30:24
Speaker
That's that client report for everyone. But when we're getting that written feedback feedback, we're staying in the margins because that's focusing us on feedback, not evaluation and judgment. I think that that's really critical in our context as well with the the TAs is we focus on telling the TAs you are a facilitator of knowledge, you are not a teacher.
00:30:44
Speaker
It's your job is not, while we will be doing some level of judgment and grading, your focus is not on that and also If you wait until the assignment is already turned in before you start providing any level of feedback to the student, the assignment is going to probably be terrible.
00:31:00
Speaker
You haven't given the student enough context to be able to write an effective document because they don't know what they're targeting. you know um What we want to see is a lot of iterations where you're having the conversations with the students. We'll even have assignments where the students have to write out the outline and then they come to a workshop where they're discussing okay what is it about why i wrote out the topic list or the figures that i'm intending to use how is that working into this common narrative is everything internally consistent we're going through those iterations of feedback before a document is actually turned in because by the time the document's turned in i really only have one more opportunity to provide feedback
00:31:38
Speaker
And if I'm trying to give all of this feedback about the structure because we didn't have any conversations leading into it, as well as wanting to provide this detailed feedback on, you know, well, why is this highlighting that figure instead of this one?
00:31:51
Speaker
it ends up being a document that just has so much red in it, the student doesn't know what to focus on. And really, and i'm I'm curious your thoughts here, but I think a student really can only focus on about three things maybe as the majority as the the major comments. And by that time we lose their focus.
00:32:07
Speaker
So if we're not giving a lot of opportunity for feedback before they turn the assignment in you're going
Professional Writing as Iterative Process
00:32:13
Speaker
to lose them. You're not going to be able to go through nearly as much learning. Absolutely. and And that's again why we focus on what are two three maybe four things in some cases but generally it's two or three things that you know we are also careful not to just act like other things don't exist but we explain to the student you know these are some other things if you have time but i think you're going to see the most improvement and oftentimes right when you when you revise one thing if you you know for instance if you change you work on the organization of your document
00:32:46
Speaker
Sometimes it fixes the other problems. Right. So, you know, you want to be, you know, you want to go step by step, but yeah, I think you want to avoid overwhelming. Right. And that's, that's like the rookie new teacher mistake. Right. I mean, I'm already, you know, we're probably all thinking about those first years we graded papers and we're like marking things up all over and what results are better though? Or the ones we will do now where, right you know it's less is more. It's not a challenge to see if you could find every mistake. It's activity and focusing on student growth and how can we leave feedback that's going to enable the most growth in this moment for them. Yeah, and it also comes down to like
00:33:30
Speaker
whoever is doing this feedback, they have limited time. So if you're focused on trying to find every single mistake, you're not only wasting the students time, you're wasting your own time. You know, if you can give the things that are going to improve this report the most fairly quickly, fairly succinctly and allow the student to go through an iteration, then what you get back for that next iteration, i could spend five different sessions that are five minutes long and end up with a way better work product than if I had poured an hour into trying to provide as much feedback on this document as I possibly can and then hand it over to the student.
00:34:00
Speaker
The document is just not going to get much better from that. It goes back to we're looking for an effective document, right? And you want to revise and iterate until you get to that point. High achieving students are also perfectionists, right? And the reality is that you're never going to reach perfection. Also, you don't need to.
00:34:18
Speaker
things This is one thing I really appreciate george about Georgia Tech is I think we talk about workplace expectations and ah in ah in a really good way here. Not that they are the be all and end all, but to give students, start acclimating them to what that really looks like, which is your point the things you spend eight weeks doing as a student, you will spend eight days doing in the workplace, right?
00:34:39
Speaker
You have to work at a faster pace. And that means writing effectively, not writing your perfect report every time, right? Not keeping your writing to yourself because you never think that it's going to be good enough and therefore you don't communicate. It's just really, i mean, it's really freeing, right? Because, and it's understandable when we think about K-12 education and and, you know, just, you're always trying to do perfect work when you are a high achieving with a student, but it's not necessary.
Peer Review Insights
00:35:09
Speaker
I'm sure your tutors would much rather see imperfect work two weeks before the writing is due than a more polished document a day before it's due. Yes.
00:35:21
Speaker
Absolutely. Don't think that you're just going to have one feedback session and that's it, especially for like a TA context when you're doing some level of grading. It's not you grade it and that's the only time that you ever talk about this thing. You have to have many different iterations.
00:35:36
Speaker
and with different kinds of audiences because when you're writing that report that has multiple audiences, you need to be running it by multiple audiences because if it's going to the same people, if it's just going to your TA or just going to your classmate or just going to a writing center tutor, you're missing, we can't all read for the same thing. So if you're going to everyone, and that that does take time,
00:35:58
Speaker
On the other hand, you can also hand over your work to that person and say, can you read it and just give me a paragraph about what you think? You know, and then you can you can multitask this stuff. If your writing is going to be read by multiple audiences, you need to get feedback from multiple audiences.
00:36:14
Speaker
And if possible, the same kinds of audiences as what's going to be reading that writing. and learn to prioritize that feedback, right? Because you should absolutely pay more attention to the feedback on the technical stuff from your TA than from the Writing Center Tutor.
00:36:28
Speaker
That doesn't mean that our tutors are going to give important feedback, whereas when you're thinking about, you know, talking about the impact of your findings, Writing Center Tutor may have more insight into that because they are that general audience who doesn't know any the technical stuff,
00:36:45
Speaker
They just need to know they're that's what they're focused on. so Also, you know that's a choice you have as a communicator, but that's also really hard, right? Because ultimately we can't no we can't make that decision for them about what to do with this feedback.
00:37:00
Speaker
We talked a lot about hard trainers, but i think that this episode should also be helpful for people who are doing peer reviews. What advice do you give to peer reviewers? Yeah, so one of the things
00:37:15
Speaker
that makes peer review of any kind, whether it's with a tutor or in a classroom, more effective is to think think about not as if you're doing a peer review, for example. And because you know being a TA or a tutor too is a great opportunity because we all give feedback in our jobs. We have to give peer feedback.
00:37:34
Speaker
But one of the things that is beneficial about peer review is that it's not just about telling someone what they're doing right or wrong. You're also seeing how things work, right? So when you are giving peer feedback, um especially students in the classroom, for example,
00:37:50
Speaker
um it's an opportunity to see what works and doesn't work, right? I mean, kind of skill ideas, you know, you see, you never thought about organizing this section that way, or someone's, you know, maybe a tutor or a TA has been telling you, like, you've got to be clear about this, you've got to point out the importance of this better.
00:38:10
Speaker
and you're just like, I don't know how to do it. Like I'm running out words. When you participate in peer feedback and you're a reviewer for your classmate, you can look at their work and sometimes see like, oh, those are the words you meant. When you say, be clear, you really do mean use phrasing like the significance of these findings is, right?
00:38:33
Speaker
Sometimes it takes that to click, right? So um one of the things um I encourage my tutors with this and actually my tutors report um pretty consistently that they become better writers by being those readers.
Writing as Collaborative Process
00:38:45
Speaker
right I've heard the same thing from our GTAs.
00:38:47
Speaker
Because they see how other people approach problems and they make different mistakes, but they also do things more effectively. I also just think that the act of giving that feedback helps you better understand the way that this problem can manifest differently, the the different sort of range of this problem.
00:39:07
Speaker
It's that, ah you know, oh, I should take my own advice. From a learning perspective, one of the frameworks is ball Bloom's Taxonomy. and you know Some people will say, i like this, I don't like this as a framework, but you know towards the top of this, what is very effective learning strategy, evaluation is sitting up there right under synthesis. so The best thing you can do is have to synthesize a whole lot of content, figure out the best way to be able to explain to somebody and write a report about it.
00:39:34
Speaker
A one step, only a marginal step lower than that is to be able to examine somebody else's work, learn from it, and give them effective feedback. You're going to learn not only the technical details of what they're doing, you're going to learn how they write, what whether you would want to incorporate them of that yourself, what works about that, what doesn't work about that.
00:39:52
Speaker
You're going to learn a ton from that process. that process and That's why we you know we say feedback is collaborative, writing is collaborative, There's a great book called of Naming What We Know, Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies. It's a great book that I use in my tutor training course. It's not about peer feedback, but it articulates some of these sort things we know about how writing works. and One of those is writing a social.
00:40:17
Speaker
We have this idea and it makes sense, you know, we come to especially college thinking about i think this idea that writers like go off on their own and then they like kind of like they're off by themselves then they come back with a the genius piece of writing.
00:40:31
Speaker
and The reality is that's not how it works. and so When we say writing is social or writing is collaborative, writing is thinking, like that happens in conversation. and one Another key text we read is our writing scholar Kenneth Bruppy on conversation and collaboration and writing.
00:40:52
Speaker
and Our tutors really love that piece. they That is a piece where they will like throw that out in the staff meeting. It sticks with them, but what sticks with them is this kind this this connection between talking to people about ideas and writing and communicating.
00:41:07
Speaker
and Those are really intertwined. and so Here feedback is though is a way of having that conversation. that is a draft A conversation with someone is a draft, is part of the writing process.
00:41:20
Speaker
and I think normalizing that talking about writing, it is not something you have to go off and do in the library in the book or by yourself. There is a part of that process that happens that way, but you don't get to the sitting down and typing away you know um without those conversations.
Usability Training for GTAs
00:41:35
Speaker
and i It's iterative. but you You might sit down and write a little bit and then you need to go talk to somebody about what you were structuring, make sure it makes sense, have them recenter. Then you go right back and you do writing on your own. but it's not completely solitary. And if you are trying to gut it out by yourself, um you're missing a key component of the process and that's not how writing works and you're going to have better results the more you talk about it, which does involve a lot more planning.
00:42:01
Speaker
You have to think back, you have to give yourself more time. You cannot do that writing project. You're not going to write that report in three days. You need to back up and start working on it two weeks, three weeks in advance, but you'll be really glad you did because your writing is going to it will, the the improvement will feel effortless when you give it time to talk and to get this peer feedback.
00:42:22
Speaker
And really what we're trying to do in training our trainers is make them become these ideal peer reviewers who really know how to contextualize and think and approach a piece of writing so that they can give the best feedback.
00:42:36
Speaker
And David, I know that one of the things that you do is really train your GTAs to think about usability and how that is really a factor that combines both the technical side of the assignment and the communication side of the assignment.
00:42:53
Speaker
Yeah, one of the the biggest challenges I think for a lot of our TAs is whatever learning process they went to was very heavily focused on a the technical analysis that needed to be done and getting to the right answer at the end of the day.
00:43:07
Speaker
um one of the pieces we keep wanting to do is how do you detangle all of that information that's in somebody's mind structure in a way that it's makes sense to your audience. I'm not writing for me.
00:43:21
Speaker
I'm not writing to prove that I understand this concept. I'm writing in such a way that the person that's reading this document understands it with the least amount of effort possible. I think for our TAs, that's a really hard thing to contend with.
Curiosity and Communication for New Tutors
00:43:34
Speaker
it's They want to immediately go into, this is the data, this is the analysis, yep, you have everything here, we're good.
00:43:40
Speaker
And they don't necessarily take the step back to say, no, I'm not just here to evaluate the analysis. I'm here to play a role that might exist in this company. Can I read this document quickly? Like you have 10 minutes to read this document and you need to make a decision.
00:43:57
Speaker
Were you able to make that decision based on the 10 minutes that you put into it? Robbing up then, imagine you have a new set of tutors, a new set of GTAs.
00:44:09
Speaker
What's the one piece of advice you want to leave them with before they have to tackle the challenge of providing feedback on communication? This may seem a little touchy feely, but I always, are the last thing I want tutors to hear before they go out and work with their first student is you're going to do fine as long as you have two things. One is you're genuinely curious and want to learn.
00:44:30
Speaker
So if you're approaching every project that comes with me across your path, genuinely wanting to learn about it, you're going to give good feedback. You're also going to give feedback if you're doing this because you want to help others succeed.
00:44:43
Speaker
you You care about their success. um because that's going to get you invested. If you're going in with those two things, you don't have to be the best writer. And I also should say that if you want to be a teacher tutor, do not let feeling like you're not the best writer communicator hold you back.
00:44:58
Speaker
um You don't need to be, you need to be curious and you need to want to help people. Right. I always, whenever I'm grading, try to come in with the frame of mind that I'm excited to learn what the student thinks. I'm excited to see the student's insights and not oh, how many problems am I going to find?
00:45:17
Speaker
think that's the absolute wrong mindset to approach reading as student's communication. Yeah, because curiosity and care about what you're doing is going to lead you to ask good questions, and those good questions are going to start that conversation, and it's through that conversation verbalizing this important work that this they're doing, is that's when the writer is going to get some clarity on what they're doing. That's when they're going to have that aha moment of like,
00:45:44
Speaker
Oh, right. I just need to say that. And oftentimes here at Tech, you know, it's, oh, wow. I've actually really accomplished something here. I totally agree. The only piece I think I would add to that is don't be scared about trying to make sure that the feedback you're providing is perfect because your goal is growth. You're trying to help the student grow in some aspect and there could be 20 different things that they were able to grow on.
00:46:09
Speaker
You could have suggested any one of those things and different people will suggest different items, but the sheer fact that you care and you are recommending something that they're able to grow on is going to be incredibly useful to the students. So don't be scared about the kind of feedback that you're giving.
00:46:24
Speaker
And even if you're giving something that turns out to be bad feedback, just explain why you had given the feedback in the first place that maybe there was a misunderstanding about the audience or a misunderstanding about some component and say, okay, now knowing more, this is maybe the direction I would go. Yeah, as long as you're doing what Kaylin suggested and a giving being genuine, then that's fine.
00:46:43
Speaker
Exactly. And don't be afraid to say you don't know, you know, or saying our tutors are always, you know, popping their head in my office and saying, okay, do you have a second? And and they'll tell me a scenario and they'll get my feedback on here's what I would say.
00:46:57
Speaker
And don't be afraid to refer back and say, okay, you know, I think I would do this because, but actually this is a great question to ask your TA, or this is a great question to ask the professor because, you know, if I don't have clarity and you don't have clarity,
00:47:12
Speaker
This is a good indicator that this is a question that needs to be asked. Don't be afraid ask questions. Thinking of the new GTAs that that David might be training who are listening to this episode, Caitlin, what pitch would you give them for advice that they should give students on coming to the communication center, even though they're in these highly technical classes?
00:47:33
Speaker
What should our GTAs tell students when they're encouraging them to come to the communication center? Yeah, I always want to make sure that students know One, that they don't have to bring anything.
00:47:44
Speaker
It's okay to come and just have the assignment guide and be like, I don't know where to start. We don't report out.
Benefits of Communication Centers
00:47:50
Speaker
um It is up to them if they would like to share that they've been to the communication center, but we don't report out that a student has come for the purpose of like checking in make sure like, oh, I don't think their writing's up to par and they should go see a tutor. We're not going report out for that kind of thing.
00:48:05
Speaker
So it's totally fine if they come in and they say, I don't know what I'm doing. That stays in the communication center. um So, so you know, that and not having a draft, it's totally fine.
00:48:18
Speaker
We want to be that space where they can come talk through things. We'll start where they need us to start. And that could also just be, look, this is due in two days. I feel really good about the content. I've gotten great feedback from my TA.
00:48:29
Speaker
i just I'm just nervous. There's embarrassing typos. We'll take care of that as well. But we meet them where they are. It's also a super easy process if time is a concern. We offer our appointment students can choose when their appointment is they can choose is it in person in our unit and cloth is it by video is it a written feedback appointment so if they have a pretty established draft they've gotten lot of feedback and they know exactly what they want to look for if they could just upload that tell us what to look for they don't actually have to take time to meet with us so it's a really accessible free um option.
00:49:03
Speaker
I also talk a lot to students about you know when you are. In high school, you have a lot of people to read things right there, right? You might be used to having a sibling or a parent or a friend because they're right there in the room with you.
00:49:15
Speaker
You lose that when you come to college. And that is that is our job too. It is also our job to be that best friend who reads your work and gives you feedback or that older older sibling who always used to read your papers and and tell you what was working and what's not. We do have additional training, but But we're there. That is our job. Our job is to be there, to have these conversations and be a sounding board.
00:49:39
Speaker
Yeah, and I would emphasize in talking specifically to the TAs, it's not just somebody who needs help with writing or that you think is a bad writer that you would say go to the writing center. It's everybody can benefit from it. And so one of the things I would recommend is early on mention that this resource exists and that every single person sitting in there, regardless of how good they are at writing, should go use this resource.
00:50:06
Speaker
and Then oftentimes what that's going to mean is when you then drop these hints that, you know hey, maybe it would be a good idea to head over there, that doesn't mean that I'm telling you your writing sucks, but rather that you can find a way that you can improve upon it. Right. i mean We're here at college to experience growth, and my understanding is that's what the communication center is all about.
00:50:24
Speaker
Yeah. and you know If you're here at Georgia Tech, you're a capable communicator and writer. You may not feel that way, but this isn't remedial. This is about elevating your skills.
00:50:37
Speaker
We ask our students to do really hard things. This is not an easy place, so and that's why our support is here. It's not because you can't do it. It's because we're asking you to do something really hard and really new, um and and people, we learn together.
00:50:52
Speaker
Even if you find an author somewhere who writes great books, one of the big things we'll do is go find other authors so they can learn from them so they can get even better. That's exactly what the resource is doing. Well, thank you both so much for being here. Thank you for all that you do and training your trainers so that our students can be better communicators.
00:51:12
Speaker
Thank you. Thanks for having