A professor challenged the ISU community to move towards an interactive approach to editing papers.

Rebecca Burnett, professor of English, spoke on “Formative Feedback Via Technology” as the fourth edition of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences master teacher series Wednesday at the Communications Building.

Burnett stressed the importance of increasing the student’s ownership of a paper they have done instead of having the professor be in charge of making the revisions.

“One form of assessment is through summative feedback, which monitors learning by evaluation of an assignment once it’s finished,” she said.

During the revision process, Burnett said the formative approach will enable students to receive feedback while they are writing their paper.

“Using formative feedback among students and professors promotes reviewing and reinforcing suggestions given by teachers toward learners,” she said.

Through this program, students will learn how to assess their own writing, which will encourage them to be better writers in the future, Burnett said.

Peer critiques are possible in lectures with hundreds of students, she said, because “it’s more like a conversation between small groups of students.”

“By using formative feedback the author retains complete control of accepting or rejecting an editor’s corrections when revising a report,” Burnett said. “The editor can model ways for the author to go about revising a paper.”

Oscar Salazar, graduate student in art and design, said Burnett’s approaches to implementing technology in the classroom is more student-friendly.

“The comments can be less complicated and are geared more toward the individual student,” he said.

He also said Burnett’s lecture was laid back and comfortable.

Gary Albrightson, adjunct assistant professor of English, said Burnett’s formative feedback approach is “applicable to many types of writing. It’s a more personalized approach than just comments in ink.”