USG targets professors’ feedback on written work

Correction appended

Members of the USG Senate engaged in preliminary discussions Sunday evening to brainstorm ideas for improving communication between students and professors regarding written comments on end-of-term coursework.

The USG working group to focus on the topic is comprised of U-Councilors Jacob Candelaria ’09, Kate Huddleston ’11 and Brian No ’10. The group has yet to meet with any administrators as the group’s planning is still in its early stages, No said.

“We don’t really know how to approach this problem, but it is an issue worth looking at,” No said. “Our goal is to look into ways we can create a dialogue with the faculty and administration to see what we can do to bridge these two sides.”

Discussions at the meeting focused on mechanisms for standardizing faculty feedback on written work and developing channels through which students can seek additional comments.

Suggestions at the meeting ranged from requiring professors to return all end-of-term work to instituting a minimum word count for comments on final papers, junior papers and senior theses. No stressed that the ideas tossed out at the meeting included both “informal, smaller steps” and “extremely formal [ideas], just to have that range.”

Candelaria said that such regulation of faculty feedback may not be necessary, as he thinks channels of communication between faculty and students are already in place. The problem with these policies, he explained, is poor publicity.

“A lot of the issues discussed … really had at their foundation a lack of communication between students and their professors,” he said. “I think we can probably handle a lot of this by providing students with more concise and clear information.”

The working group will meet with Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel before formally presenting any proposals to the University administration, No said.

Still, early faculty feedback has been negative.

“The elected undergraduate representatives to our department have never raised any concerns over [these issues], nor have I as departmental representative received more than one or two isolated complaints every few years, so we have had no reason to believe there is any general problem,” philosophy professor John Burgess said in an e-mail.

East Asian studies professor David Leheny said that he thinks some of the proposed changes would ultimately be detrimental to both students and faculty.

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“I would worry that a minimal word count or other formal procedures at the end [of the term] would shift most grading approaches to an end-of-the-semester crush rather than to the kind of personal attention that faculty should ideally provide,” Leheny said in an e-mail.

Still, No said he sees room for improvement in the current system, particularly with regard to written comments from professors. “The word count [of written feedback] should be commensurate to the length of the paper,” he said. “No one should be getting back 10-page papers with one-line comments.”

The group also suggested establishing a formal channel through which students could request more detailed comments on a paper from either their professor or another faculty member in the department.

USG undergraduate life chair Arthur Levy ’10, however, said he thought the proposed procedures should be unnecessary.

“I think that there should be an organized avenue by which students can approach a professor to receive more feedback on written work — they should not have to jump through hoops,” Levy said in an e-mail. “That being said, the responsibility lies with the student to take the initiative to contact the professor [to request] more comments.”

Many students do not even take the initiative to collect their end-of-term work, Burgess noted.

“The carton with last semester’s uncollected papers and exams still sits beneath the bank of course boxes today, halfway through the new semester, still well over half full,” he said. “That fact in itself would discourage writing extended comments on final papers even if it were feasible to do so.”

Burgess also cited a number of complications to some of the suggestions proposed at the meeting.

“It goes without saying that instructors should provide feedback on written work submitted during the course of the term, and that final papers and exams should be returned to students,” he explained. “Whether there should be the same kind of written comments on final papers and exams as there is on assignments during the course of the term is quite another question.”

Burgess indicated that his department would consider proposals including requirements for faculty feedback if they gain appropriate administrative approval. Still, he said, he did not think they would be well-received.

“If the dean of the college or one of the pertinent university committees makes a formal proposal, we will, after giving time for student representatives to consult with undergraduate majors, hold a department meeting to discuss it,” he said.

“I do not know what conclusion the department might reach in such a case,” he added, “but I expect that not many faculty would be at all happy.”

Correction

An earlier version of this article misattributed a quote from Sunday evening's USG meeting to U-Councilor Kate Huddleston ’11. In fact, the comment was made by U-Councilor Brian No ’11.