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Lesson Study in Economics: Efficient and Effective Feedback - A Lesson Study Investigating Students' Responses and Follow-up to Feedback on their Writing

Authors: Brooks, Taggert; Knowles, Elizabeth; Kopp, Bryan; Murray, James; Strangman, Laurie
Discipline / Field: Business Communications, Research Methods
Submission Date: August 1, 2013 

Abstract: We developed and implemented a systematic and efficient approach to give feedback on student writing in a business research methods course. In this lesson study, we investigate how students respond to this feedback. The lesson takes place at mid-semester, after students have spent some time developing their research question and reviewing the literature. At the time of our classroom observation, the students receive the first feedback of their first draft of the introduction section of their final paper. We observed their conversations upon receiving the feedback and noted how it influenced their revision plans. We conducted our lesson study over two semesters, Fall 2012 and Spring 2013.

To make the process of giving feedback efficient, we developed a database of comments on student writing which were specific to the objectives of the assignment. There are seven goals of the introduction assignment, some of which are specific to an introduction section of a research project, such as “State the purpose of your research project”, and some of which are very general, such as “Communicate in a clear and meaningful way.” Using these goals as the traits for a rubric, we developed a set of feedback comments that align to each goal suggesting improvements or noting when the objective was met. While the comments are specific enough to address specific goals of the assignment and common writing problems, they were general enough so that they could be used for any student’s writing for the given assignment. We use text expanding software (Breevy for Windows, TextExpander for Mac) that allows the instructor to quickly populate a letter to each student with a set of comments appropriate for their submission.

Our classroom investigation revealed some challenges in giving feedback that effectively guides students on how to revise their work. One significant example concerns how students communicate purpose. While students may have attempted to communicate a specific purpose in one part of their introduction, often the introduction as a whole lacked focus. Even after receiving feedback, students were largely unable to recognize this problem or understand what kind of revision was appropriate.

Efficient and Effective Feedback – A Lesson Study Investigating Students’ Responses and Follow-up to Feedback on their Writing (Full Report)

Evolution across the Biology curriculum at UWL: Departmental initiation & implementation process

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The Wisconsin Teaching Scholars and Fellows Program, sponsored by the UW System Office of Professional & Instructional Development (OPID), involves outstanding instructors from UW institutions who participate in a year long study of teaching and learning. Teaching Fellows are early career, untenured faculty or academic staff and Teaching Scholars are mid to late career individuals. Participants attend Faculty College, a Summer Institute in Madison, and several meetings during the year. Each participant completes a substantial scholarship of teaching and learning project. To learn more about the program, visit the UW System's WTFS site. or UWL's site.  For additional information contact Kristin Koepke.

2024-2025 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Rachel Funk-Johnson is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Management. She began her academic career at UWL in 2023 and teaches a variety of courses focused on organizational behavior, international management, and entrepreneurship. Before joining UWL, Rachel had over 15 years of experience as a small business owner and consultant in clinical mental health counseling, healing arts, and female-owned small business support. Rachel has translated her enthusiasm and classroom experience into her SOTL project focusing on pedagogical approaches that support first-generation students through the adaption of entrepreneurial mindset.

Xinhui Li is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He joined UWL in 2015 and primarily teaches Fundamentals of Microbiology (MIC 230), Food Microbiology (MIC 380), and Industrial and Fermentation Microbiology (MIC 427/527). His research field is food microbiology, and his current research focuses on antibiotic resistance in the food supply chain and food safety education, with projects sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture. He is passionate about teaching, and his WTFS project will examine how to increase student engagement in the Food Microbiology (MIC 380) course to improve teaching effectiveness.

Astrid Lorena Ochoa Campo, originally from Barranquilla, Colombia, serves as an Assistant Professor of Spanish and World Language Education in the Department of Global Cultures and Languages. Currently in her fourth year at UWL, she instructs First Year Seminar, literature, and culture courses in Spanish, along with courses in World Language Education. With 23 years of teaching experience spanning K-12 education in Colombia and the United States, her teaching is enriched by her research on Contemporary Latin American and Latinx women authors, motherhood studies, Latinx studies, and language pedagogy. Her SoTL project investigates how K-12 teacher candidates in world language education programs can assist their cooperating teachers and students in implementing the high-leverage practice of speaking the target language 90% of the time during class through equity-focused, inclusive lessons.

2023-2024 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Cord Brundage is an Assistant Professor and Veterinarian in the Biology Department at the University of Wisconsin- La Crosse. He was previously a faculty member at Cal Poly Pomona where he served as the University Faculty Fellow for Assessment, Chair of Undergraduate Research and his department’s Graduate and Undergraduate Programs Coordinator. Dr. Brundage teaches primarily human and comparative vertebrate anatomy and physiology. He is passionate about experiential learning and pre-professional development and currently serves on the national advisory board for trustees for the American Pre-Veterinary Medical Association. Dr. Brundage’s SoTL project will focus on student success, equity and inclusive assessment of collaborative learning activities in STEM.   

Kate Evans (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor in Recreation Management and Therapeutic Recreation. She began at UWL in 2014 and teaches a variety of courses including those focused on diversity and social justice, facilitation, human resources and management in leisure services, philosophical foundations of leisure, and a general education introductory leisure course. In addition, Dr. Evans is the Graduate Program Director for Recreation Management and Therapeutic Recreation and coordinates the department’s general education course, REC 150. Her research focuses on issues of equity and social justice in leisure participation, particularly in the realm of women’s physically active leisure and outdoor adventure recreation. Her WTFS project will focus on Recreation Management and Therapeutic Recreation’s general education course, REC 150. The research will examine how the course can be structured to better support the wide range of majors and first-year students who enroll in REC 150. Additionally, as the focus of the course is leisure, quality of life, and well-being, she will also examine how the course can best be designed to help support the students’ overall success at UWL.

Eugenia Turov is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UW-La Crosse. She has been at UWL for over a decade and primarily teaches General Chemistry I (CHM 103), the department's introductory general education course. She is passionate about inclusive teaching and student success, and values authentic connections with students to empower them to be effective and resilient learners. In the fall of 2022, she participated in a UW-Madison-led system-wide study on the impact of inclusive teaching practices on academic performance. To deepen her understanding of these connections and investigate how they affect students in a general education science course, her WTFS project will examine how specific inclusive teaching practices affect student learning outcomes in CHM 103.

2022-2023 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Valeria Krage is an Associate Teaching Professor who joined the Department of Ed Studies in 2019. Krage teaches early childhood courses including Introduction to Early Childhood Education, Curriculum and Assessment in ECE, and Family, School and Community Partnerships. A resident of beautiful Minnesota, she has spent the past thirty years working in the field of early childhood education in a variety of capacities. For many of those years, she worked in a program called Early Childhood Family Education, a MN state-wide program, where she taught in a 4k classroom, facilitated parent education classes and oversaw program operations. Krage is passionate about all things early childhood, particularly the impact of poverty on learning, toxic stress, and family engagement in learning. Krage's SoTL project will focus on deepening student learning and understanding through collaborative discourse.

Kristina LaPlant is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Georgia State University in 2019. Her primary field of study is American political behavior with an emphasis on emotional and cognitive processing, gender stereotypes, and identity politics. Her research has been published in Political Behavior, Politics & Policy, and Social Science Quarterly. Dr. LaPlant is eager to join the WTFS program to continue her work on an ongoing project that teaches students how to build public opinion survey instruments to gauge political, economic, and social inequities in the La Crosse community.

Taylor Cole Miller is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies. He was previously Assistant Professor of Entertainment and Media Studies at the University of Georgia where he also served as Academic Director of the Peabody Awards Media Center. He is a media historian whose current book research investigates the queer legacy of American television syndication. Building on the collaborative design of his documentary production course at the University of Georgia (with documentaries on issues such as slavery and the University, K-12 integration, and Confederate monuments), Miller will research pedagogical approaches to collaboration in the classroom for future digital media production courses in the new media lab at Murphy Library. He is excited about the opportunity to develop such collaborative approaches through peer community as well as consult and mentorship with seasoned faculty through the WTFS program.

2020-2022 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Rebekah Fowler is an Associate Professor in the English Department, having started at UWL in 2011. She teaches courses in medieval literature, Shakespeare, the history of the English language, introductory courses for English and literature majors, and general education courses, including College Writing I, Western Literature I, and courses using modern texts that engage in medieval themes and settings. Her current research interests are in Arthurian literature and legend, virtue ethics in medieval literature, and medieval mysticism. Fowler's WTFS project builds on a recent SoTL project on deep reading by exploring the potential of contemplative practices, especially the monastic reading practice of lectio divina, to build into students' schedule the time to slow down the reading process and think more deliberately about the literature they are reading. In our fast-paced, digital world, research has shown that we are reading, and therefore thinking less deeply than we used to, which may impact how we engage with the world. This line of inquiry came about as the result of a series of surveys given to general education literature students as part of a SoTL project on deep reading that revealed that most students' reading practices were impacted by perceived time limitations. Drawing from her own research and Maryanne Wolf's brilliant work on deep reading, Fowler agrees with Wolf's contention that one way to encourage deeper reading is to build in time for contemplation, and this project seeks ways to do that.

Hongying Xu is an Assistant Professor in Global Cultures and Languages department. She joined the department in 2012 and teaches courses in Chinese language at different levels and Chinese culture courses. Her research interests include second language acquisition among adult learners, technology and language education, and language teaching pedagogy. Her Wisconsin Teaching Fellow project will examine the use of ePortfolios in foreign language courses. Specifically, it will examine the effectiveness of ePortfolios in helping beginning level Chinese students achieve their learning objectives as well as the perceived benefits of ePortfolio by students in developing their self-regulated learning skills and learner autonomy.  

2019-2020 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Whitney George Dregne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, joining the department in 2014. Her research and teaching interests include: student-centered teaching methods, retention of mathematics, applications of general mathematics, and the meaning behind grades. Her Teaching Fellows Project is centered on determining if there is a relationship between the long-term retention of mathematical knowledge and how mathematics is taught, particularly investigating lessons and projects personalized to students. For instance, when learning about compound interest and rates, are students more likely to retain mathematical knowledge if they are presented individualized problems that involve their real-life loans and investments?

Sarah Pember is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Education & Health Promotion. She joined the School Health Program in 2018, and teaches courses in child and adolescent health, the foundations of health education, and school health leadership, curriculum, and instruction. Sarah’s background in elementary education has inspired the focus of her 2019-2020 SoTL project, which will examine the ways that the literature circle model can be adapted to college-level health and general education classes to improve student reading compliance and engagement with course material, while also evaluating the extent to which the small-group, peer-led discussions can enhance student perceptions of diversity, inclusivity, and cultural engagement within the course.

2018-2019 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Suthakaran Veerasamy is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department. He has taught at UWL since the Fall of 2013, teaching courses in culture and mental health, theories of psychotherapy, psychology of religion, and a graduate course in multicultural counseling for the School Psychology program.  As an instructor who specializes in culture and race courses, Suthakaran is interested in investigating how the personality characteristics of a teacher can function as a pedagogical tool to promote personal transformation in students so they may better navigate a multicultural world.  He will be focusing his 2018-2019 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning project on investigating common personality traits of instructors who are recognized for their ability to profoundly transform their students’ worldviews. 

Claire Mitchell is an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Global Cultures and Languages. She is in her second year at UWL, and she teaches courses in Spanish such as Advanced Grammar and Advanced Conversation as well as courses in World Language Education. Her teaching interests focus on the teaching and learning of culture, the use of social media in the foreign language classroom, and the incorporation of positive emotions in the learning experience as a means to motivate learners to continue studying a foreign language. Her current SoTL interests center on the use of virtual and augmented reality in the foreign language classroom to develop learners’ cultural and linguistic competences. As such, the topic of her SoTL project as a Wisconsin Teaching Fellow is the use of virtual reality in the foreign language classroom to facilitate a broader and more intimate understanding of Colombian culture. To do so, learners enrolled in advanced-level Spanish courses will work with virtual reality headsets to explore different social, economic, and political perspectives associated with narcofútbol in Colombia. The goal of this project is to investigate whether or not the use of virtual reality affords learners opportunities to transcend the four walls of the classroom, recognize that there are multiple factors that influence who people are and how they communicate, and subsequently, deepen their understanding of the Colombian culture. 

2017-2018 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Jim Carlson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies, has been a faculty member at UWL since 2013. He has been teaching the Field 1 course (Language, Literacy and Culture in the Secondary Classroom) for teacher candidates in the Secondary Teacher Education Program (STEP) since his arrival. He is currently the Professional Development School (PDS) liaison at Onalaska and West Salem Middle Schools. His teaching and research interests focus on the intersections of literacy, social justice, and teacher identity. As a 2017-2018 teaching fellow, Jim will be looking into a reflective teaching journal assignment for its potential to guide teacher candidates in developing what Paul Gorski calls equity literacy, or the ability to recognize and respond to inequities in school policies and practices and in classroom materials and interactions.

Eric Eager, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, has been a faculty member at UWL since 2012.   His research interests include flipped classrooms, active classrooms, specifications grading, mathematical modeling in the classroom, and research experience for undergraduates.  During his teaching fellowship he will study how the flipped classroom facilitates learning in a mathematical modeling-based approach to teaching differential equations and mathematical biology.  He will also study the effects of alternative grading techniques in courses like calculus, for which mastery is required for success in subsequent courses. Lastly, he will study how these two teaching innovations affect success in possible undergraduate research endeavors. 

James Murray, Associate Professor of Economics, joined UW-La Crosse in fall 2009. He teaches introductory and intermediate macroeconomics, business research methods, statistics/econometrics, and quantitative research methods in UWL’s MBA program.  Dr. Murray is active in the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education, and has received several grants to support lesson studies and curriculum development, often taking advantage of innovative technologies. He has published work related to teaching and learning in the Journal of Economic Education, Journal of Education for Business, Journal of Academic Librarianship, and Economics Bulletin. His Wisconsin Teaching Scholars project involves developing an efficient and effective multidimensional approach on giving feedback on research and writing to undergraduate business research methods students.

2016-2017 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Kate Lavelle is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Studies Department. She has taught at UWL since the Fall of 2013, teaching courses in public speaking, communication criticism, debate, research methods, and the intersection of communication and sport. As an instructor who specializes in Advocacy and Communication Criticism courses, Kate is interested in investigating and implementing pedagogical strategies to improve the quality and effectiveness of student speeches in a variety of situations. She will be focusing her 2016-17 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning project on investigating and developing assessment models for evaluating learning outcomes in limited preparation speeches.

Lei Zhang joined the English Department in 2014, teaching journalism, new media studies, and rhetoric courses. For her SoTL project she will investigate how to effectively incorporate social media in writing and journalism courses and study social media's potential for meeting traditional learning outcomes. Specifically, she will study how to use social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Storify to broaden students' knowledge base, engage them in critical analysis, and build their ability to communicate effectively across different platforms.

2015-2016 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars

Heather Schenck is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  Heather teaches organic chemistry and spectroscopy.  Organic chemistry has a reputation for difficulty among pre-health majors, and attrition rates at many institutions are high (20+% D/F/W).  Heather’s laboratory research interests include the synthesis and spectroscopic characterization of small molecules designed to mimic biological iron binding molecules.  In pedagogy, Heather has been working to develop novel pedagogies for organic chemistry.  Her goal is to increase student engagement and success, in order to get more students through the course successfully.  Her prior work in this area has produced promising results.  She is now interested in testing the merits of in-class review of prior chemistry topics.  The opening overview of past topics can consume up to the first week of the semester.  A switch to online review materials would slow the pace of coverage of new material and permit more time to be spent on new material in class.  This technique has been used to good effect in other science courses at UWL.
  
Alysa Remsburg, Associate Lecturer in Environmental Studies, came to UWL in 2014 after six years on the faculty of a small college in Maine.  As a community ecologist, Alysa joined UWL’s River Studies Center and initiated student research on dragonfly community responses to shoreline alteration.   Through teaching interdisciplinary courses such as Introduction to Environmental Studies, Environmental Sustainability, and Wisconsin Forests, Alysa helps students explore how they interact with the environment.    As a Teaching Fellow, she plans to investigate how well students learn when other students present information in comparison to when instructors present information.
 
Laurie Harmon, Assistant Professor in Recreation Management and Landscape Architect, is in her third year as faculty member at UWL.  As an educator, she emphasizes “self as learner” and encourages students to engage in collaborative and empowered learning through authentic and locally relevant projects.  She uses a social-psychological approach in her research, focusing on the person-place relationship and the transformative nature of outdoor environments.  Her focus as a Teaching Fellow is assessing the role that locally based projects have on students’ enduring learning; specifically, how developing an attachment to the region in which they study, i.e. place-based learning, might influence the overall learning process and outcomes.

2014-2015 Wisconsin Teaching Fellow and Scholars

Adam Van Liere, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, is in his third year as a faculty member at UWL. His teaching and research interests include a variety of topics related to the study of international relations, such as the challenges facing global governance, the role of various state and non-state actors in global politics, and, especially, the politics of globalization. As a Teaching Fellow, Adam is especially interested in exploring strategies for engaging students in global learning. As such, he would like to explore ways of measuring change in students’ perceptions of global challenges, global citizenship, and global learning that may result from learning opportunities that are explicitly linked to other options for global learning, like study abroad, provided to students here at UWL.

Tesia Marshik, Assistant Professor of Psychology, is in her fourth year as a faculty member a UWL. She teaches courses in developmental psychology (including lifespan and adolescent development), educational psychology, and a specialization course on human motivation. Her scholarly endeavors involve exploring the nature of students’ motivation and self-control skills, understanding how they are influenced by contextual factors (such as classroom practices and interactions with teachers), and how they relate to academic outcomes. As a teaching fellow, Tesia wants to investigate how students understand, relate to, and apply educational research to their own experiences (both as current students and as future educators/practitioners). In particular, she plans to explore the extent to which a structured, semester-long project improves students’ abilities to consume educational and psychological research. This project has been developed over the course of multiple semesters and now she is interested in more formally assessing students’ performance relevant to course learning objectives. She also plans to explore and assess the relative value of each component of the assignment and teaching materials in order to determine what works best, what could be improved, and students’ perceptions of the value of this assignment.

Natalie Katerina Eschenbaum, Assistant Professor of English, is in her sixth year as a faculty member at UWL. She teaches a variety of courses in English literature and writing, including College Writing I, English Literature I, Foundations for Literary Study, English Renaissance, Shakespeare I and II, and Milton. Her research focuses on English poetry of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries. Recently, she has been looking at literary depictions of the five bodily senses, as well as the ways in which writers employ the affect of disgust. As a scholar of teaching and learning, Natalie plans to address a seemingly simple question: What advantages come from teaching difficult poetry in a General Education course? She wants to systematically consider which specific transferable skills are gained as a student moves towards a reading of a poem that, at first read, seems impenetrable. Her work is inspired, in part, by Charles Bernstein's The Attack of the Difficult Poem (Chicago University Press, 2011) and his suggestion that reading for difficulty makes people better critical thinkers. She also plans to link her thinking to recent cognitive science research (Natalie Phillips' 2012 Stanford University study) that suggests reading literature critically activates higher level brain functions. In the end, Natalie hopes to make difficult poetry more accessible to her students, but also to make lucid the reasons why such interpretive work is essential.

Using student-centered activities to promote a better understanding of how evolution applies to human health

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Does the Assignment of Student-Generated Questions Improve Student Learning Outcomes?

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