As I developed the slides for the ATW on Assessment and Evaluation, I used feedback banking examples from my experience TAing Tariq’s CRWR 311 lyric class. Although I had feedback banking experience from working as an online tutor for many years, my UBC CRWR-specific experience was limited to one course. Now that I’ve had some more experience TAing outside of lyric, I think I can go into feedback banking strategies more deeply. So, this post will repeat some of my points in the ATW, but also go deeper! Whether you bank feedback or not, I think you will find the ideas on feedback in general useful.
Before I get into my feedback strategies, I want to make it clear that you should only bank feedback if it works for you. If you haven’t tried it, give it a try, but keep in mind it doesn’t work for everyone. Even though I feedback bank and recycle little introductory statements with most assignments, the majority of my feedback is generated as I mark rather than copy/pasted. Banked feedback can increase efficiency, but I can also understand the utility and authenticity behind the flow of generating comments on-the-spot.
What Kind of Banked Comments Work the Best?
Personally, I find banked comments tend to work best for critical feedback. One reason for this is that positive feedback is most authentic and encouraging if generated on the spot and clearly connected to the piece. Another reason I find banked feedback works best for critical comments is that it is time-consuming to craft thoughtful criticism. Encouraging comments tend to come very naturally and quickly after first reading a piece. Also, even if rushed, the worst case scenario is they aren’t quite as encouraging as possible—not the end of the world. Critical comments, on the other hand, can be very damaging if they are rushed and not-so-thoughtful; worst case scenario, they might even prevent a student from ever working on that piece of writing again. As a result, since I can develop banked comments to be more and more thoughtful as I work through many assignments, I find they often end up more tactful and useful than criticism I develop in the 15 minutes I have to mark a piece.
I guess the issue with this is that the students at the end of the batch get a little better feedback because the comments have become more and more thoughtful throughout my process? Of course, I put effort into thoughtfully commenting on the first 10 assignments, but those assignments are not benefiting from the breadth of perspective I will gain from considering many pieces. I don’t know if there’s any way around this, since no TA has time to go back through every piece at the end and update the comments. I guess this shows the benefit of the twice-over marking method; if you do one pass over all of the assignments before finalizing feedback, you will probably have a better idea of how to thoughtfully comment.
Since I find it too time-consuming to do the twice-over method, a strategy I’ve adopted is reversing my order of marking so that there is an equality to the order of marking. For instance, if there are 3 big assignments, I will mark the first assignment alphabetically, the second assignment reverse alphabetically, then for the third assignment I will start somewhere in the middle. Many TAs I’ve talked to have naturally adopted this strategy. Sometimes, you can’t avoid being better at feedback by the end of the marking—especially if you are a new TA and you’re learning rapidly. Alternatively, sometimes you can’t avoid being worse at feedback by the end because you’re so exhausted! This is why it’s good to switch around marking order like this (especially if you’re only looking at each assignment once).
Analysis of an Example of Critical Banked Feedback
Here is an example of a piece of critical banked feedback I used while marking the CRWR 205 personal essay assignment:
“You’ve done great work with the storytelling moments here. As a reader, I felt engaged by vivid and moving scenes. However, if you work on more drafts of this piece in the future, perhaps there’s room to deepen the analysis. The best observations and arguments often touch on something in human experience that many can relate to, yet also surprise the reader—it’s a hard balance! Don’t feel like you have to come up with a completely new concept; what’s important is coming from a surprising and thoughtful angle. Since the storytelling here is already adding some exciting energy and uniqueness to the piece, I think a little more depth of analysis will go a long way.”
One thing you have probably noticed already is the sandwich technique; it begins positive and ends positive. Additionally, I tend to use “you” when I am talking about a piece positively. We are often taught to talk about the writing and not the writer. Although this is extremely important for critical moments and our feedback should never become so personalized that it is therapy, I think completely severing the writer from the writing can be harmful—especially in encouraging moments. The writer is a real person and put excitement and care into this piece, so encouragement can feel a little ingenuine when it’s like “the piece is effectively does ___.”
I also like to bring in the “you” when I talk about the process of working on this piece in the future. I almost always bring in this “if you decide to work on this in the future” thing when I give critical feedback. Many students will not work on a piece after the class is done, and I want to make it clear that it’s their piece and they have agency to make decisions. Another strategy I’ve used here is ending with a “lots is working well, so a little push will go a long way” moment. As we all know as perfectionist writers, it’s easy to interpret a small suggestion as an indication that you’ve failed or the piece sucks. Consequently, reminding the student that they’ve done a good job overall is so important.
I found myself changing this banked comment to suit each student individually. Sometimes it works just as pasted, but it’s dangerously easy for marking to become conveyor-belt-esque if you do this all the time. For instance, if I think the piece is not genuinely close to being finished and a lot of it needs work, I will cut the last sentence and generate a different encouraging note.
Despite the possibility of adjustment within banked comments, one might argue that the flaw of banked positive comments I mentioned earlier applies here as well: critical comments are less authentic and specifically connected to the piece when they are copied and pasted. It’s true that my critical comments tend to be a little less explicitly connected to the piece at hand. Even when I make the comments adjustable, I tend to adjust the positive sections rather than the critical ones. I occasionally reference the student’s piece specifically in the critical moments, but only if there’s a really good example in the piece. My reason for this is that critical feedback can feel more flaw-based or attacking if it gets really close to a piece; even if you don’t use “you.” For instance, if I use the example comment above to point out a very specific part of the writing that feels “straightforward” or “not surprising,” there are two undesirable outcomes: 1) the student feels like a part of their writing sucks and 2) the student will hyper-focus on this section in revision rather than considering analysis throughout the whole piece.
This is why, in my experience, talking generally about criticisms around bigger-picture things is often the way to go. With little craft and technical things, it’s different; if someone doesn’t cite their research, I’ll point out exactly where this mistake was made. I guess what I’m saying is that being critical on big-picture parts of a piece requires a big-picture approach that doesn’t narrow in and attack—an approach that gives the student agency to figure things out without prescriptions.
Regardless, Positive Banked Comments can Work Great too
Earlier in this post, I explained that I find positive banked comments don’t work so well, as authenticity—an important part of excitement and encouragement—is lost. There are, however, exceptions to this.
Although you will find patterns not-so-connected-to-the-rubric in student writing that justify banked comments, the majority of banked comments should be connected to the rubric, since that is the common goal connected to every student’s piece (and because it’s your job to tell them how they are doing in following the rubric!). As a result, my banked positive comments tend to be rubric-relevant, as it’s not worth it improvising the same comments over and over again to state the same rubric successes. Here is an example from my nonfiction class:
“This piece definitely feels like personal essay; it is more occupied with analysis and argument than storytelling, yet still uses storytelling as a tool. You’ve done a good job of balancing the narrative and analysis. Vivid moments that the reader can imagine are present, but they always come back to the topic being analyzed.”
If I hadn’t made this simple comment, I would have wasted tons of time re-writing this sentiment in response to how well a piece fits into the intended genre. Additionally, I appreciate the moldability of short banked comments like this. For instance, if I feel like the piece feels like personal essay, but doesn’t balance narrative/storytelling so well, I can cut the second and third sentences. Although I will have to spend some time coming up with other encouragement to fill in that space, this is better than being dishonest.
Having Humanistic Comments Prepared
The people who don’t like using banked comments are right that copying and pasting can lead to pretty inauthentic comments without careful consideration. In addition to the strategies I’ve covered so far, another important strategy involved in using banked comments thoughtfully is having comments prepared in response to the humanistic side of writing rather than just the “__ is working well” or “__ is not working well” approach. Here is an example of a banked comment I’ve used a lot in nonfiction and will also use in other classes:
“I appreciate the strength it takes to write on something this personal and sensitive. Engaging with this topic has produced a really moving piece, but I also understand that it can be a difficult process. When writing on something so personal, it’s important to take care of yourself. Keep in mind that you never have to return to this and work on it again, yet you also have the possibility to expand upon it if you’re excited by it. If you feel excited by it, but it feels emotionally taxing to write, maybe it’s best to put it aside for a while. Writers will often put drafts aside for a few months even with impersonal writing; this serves as a kind of palate-cleanser so you can return later with fresh eyes.”
It’s important to have comments ready for the humanistic moments of writing like vulnerable subject matter—moments where it doesn’t feel so appropriate to just say “___ was great, but work on ___.” Since 15 minutes isn’t enough time to sensitively acknowledge the humanistic sides of a piece, I find that having some banked frameworks prepared is really useful if I want to nail the balance between thoughtful humanism and impartial boundary that it takes to be a good educator.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading my blog post! I hope these thoughts are helpful with your feedback process. If you ever have any questions or want to share any of your strategies with me, feel free to reach out to me at crwr.taadmin@ubc.ca