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I encourage my students to reach out for help whenever they need it. I end F2F classes with this reminder, end emails with this reminder, and lately, end my Twitch streams with it. I absolutely love it when they come for help. I find that 9 times out of 10, just talking to students about an assignment is enough to clarify most questions. Lately though, it seems like I’ve been communicating quite a bit more than usual with my students about their assignments. Seems reasonable, given the switch to remote learning, but the interesting thing has been that the questions are not about assignments for my class, but other assignments students have for other classes, taught by my colleagues.

I don’t mind helping students with work from other classes, but I do worry about instructing them to do something that differs from what my colleague may have told them. I wish students were comfortable with going to the professor who assigned the work, but I’m aware that they aren’t always receiving feedback that they find helpful. I think that’s a topic for another day though, as it isn’t the reason I set out to write this post. Recently, I jotted down a set of instructions I’ve found myself repeating to students as I counsel them through someone else’s assignment. I thought I’d share.

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A few weeks back, I posted “Examining the Purpose of a Dissertation Literature Review,” in which I outlined the Doctoral Research Forum I am participating in. I think the concept that the University of Akron College of Education faculty are pursuing could lead to a valuable educational experience for doctoral candidates. Additionally, I commend my UA profs because this type of collaboration between course instructors is a largely unheard of at UA. However, I have been struggling throughout the forum assignments. This is largely due to the fact that each of the past four weeks we have been required to read a scholarly article, post a written response on the Springboard (UA’s LMS) discussion forum and then respond to at least one of our colleagues responses.

This week, the game changed a bit and student participants were asked to provide feedback. From the Discussion Forum posting:

This week’s discussion is about the Research FORUM in general.  The FORUM instructors greatly value your feedback.

1. What do you think about content and process of the FORUM is effective?
2. What suggestions do you have for improving the FORUM?
3. What other comment, observations, questions, etc. would you like to share?

The following is my response. I’m sure it will be well received by some, and not so popular with others. Because of this, I titled the SUBJECT of my forum topic “Disclaimer: Honest feedback. Personal opinion.”

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