Providing meaningful and helpful feedback on writing can be a challenging and time consuming process. There are physical limitations such as time and space on the page (why are the margins always so small?) but also instructional limitations that can make it difficult to give formative feedback to students that will provide just enough guidance to help them improve their work, without doing the work for them. These are just a few of the reasons that inquiries about annotation tools are very common and popular in the academic technology neck of the woods.

Louisa Burnham, Associate Professor of History was kind enough to share her experience with iAnnotate in the story “Trading in the Red Pen for an IPad” found on the Teaching at Middlebury site here.

As a part of our initiative to support communities of practice centered on pedagogy we would be pleased to create a community centered on methods and practices for providing feedback to students. Please let us know know if you would be interested in learning more about this opportunity and we will include you in future discussions either virtual or face to face. You can either email hstafford@middlebury.edu, or fill out the online form at the bottom of the page here to express your interest.

We’re also actively collecting resources on providing feedback (like this one) and would be pleased to share your suggestions in this area as well.