What works in technical writing

I teach a few university courses in technical writing, and we just conducted a mid-semester feedback process with the students. The results of the survey help me to improve how I deliver the course. There is no one approach to teaching; we need to constantly adapt to what will help our students learn best.

I find it's helpful to reflect on this valuable feedback, so I can improve how I teach technical writing. Here is a summary of my results, and how I am already considering how to improve my courses for next semester:

What the students said

The purpose for the activities and assignments for this class are clear to me. Students agreed (almost 89%) that the course assignments and discussions are clear.

The course website is clear and easy to navigate. Almost all students (over 95%) thought the course website was clear and well structured. This mirrors an in-class plus/delta discussion I led with my students several weeks ago, where the students commented that they liked how the course website included separate pages called "Learn: __" that walked through new skills, including links to outside online content. While this isn't meant to be a replacement for following the course with the instructor, students tell me that they use this as a reference and guide to learn the concepts.

My instructor provides regular, timely, and helpful feedback to help me. Almost everyone (over 95%) agreed. I make a big effort to provide informative feedback, so it's good to see this reflected in the feedback.

The grading system is clear to me. Almost all students (over 95%) agreed. I can't claim credit for this; one course that I teach started from a copy of another instructor's course, including the assignment rubrics. When I designed my other courses, I tried to apply the same or similar metrics to those assignments, too.

The course provides meaningful opportunities to engage with my peers. This one had mixed results. Over half (55%) agreed, and 29% had no opinion, for a total of over 84% either positive or neutral. This may be because most of my courses this semester are online asynchronous, and half of the courses are intentionally designed for independent learning.

I am comfortable asking my instructor questions. Almost all students (over 93%) said I'm very approachable. This requires some effort with the online courses, so I'm glad to see it represented here. In an online course, instructor presence is via the weekly videos that I share with them to introduce the week's work and demonstrate key topics.

What I'll keep

Students also had an opportunity to respond to a few prompts to provide more detailed feedback. Because these are text entry, I need to provide my own summary here. Below are the themes for this feedback: (all quotes are paraphrased, they are not exact quotes)

What is the most helpful thing your instructor does to support your learning? The responses mostly mirrored the survey feedback, with many students sharing comments like Assignments are focused on practicing the skills we learned in class and Constant and regular feedback on every submission and Reminders for every assignment that's coming up and Gives demonstrations in class.

Most of the feedback was centered around these themes, although other comments included Posts videos to help with assignments and Shows how to use technologies that are being discussed.

The videos received particular attention, which was good to see. For online courses, I make an extra effort to record a new video for each week. In the professional and technical writing course, I usually record one video to recap the last week and highlight key concepts, and another video to introduce and discuss the new topics for the week. In the tools course, I also provide one or more videos to demonstrate the writing technologies or tools for that week.

Students appreciated these videos, leaving comments like Thank you for actually providing lecture videos, my other online courses don't do this and The instructor is very helpful in his videos and The videos provide clarity on the assignments and what to do and Videos are great for following along.

What I'll change

In addition to leaving comments about what works well, students also had an opportunity to share suggestions for how I might improve the course. As with the other feedback, I had to identify themes on my own, which was a great opportunity to reflect on their comments:

What is one thing your instructor could do that would better support your learning? I understand that this field was required, so students who had nothing to suggest entered N/A or Nothing to add or some other placeholder. I've discounted these in considering the following themes:

Some students commented on the pace of the courses, providing feedback like Less weekly work and I would prefer a little more time between learning a skill and doing an assignment that uses it and Less weekly work and "I struggle with accomplishing the work in the given schedule because __." I am not sure which courses these apply to, such as if they apply to all courses, or if these comments came from only one course.

My overall impression is that I might leave more time between learning a thing and putting it into practice. This is especially important for the course about tools and technologies; in that class, I've assigned a mid-week reflection written in the technology we are learning and an end-of-week formatting project. The schedule for this is difficult to balance, but an area I will try to improve the next time I teach the course.

Another common theme was about group work; it's not a surprise that students do not like working on a project with other students, especially where the other students in the group may not have the same schedule. Several students highlighted the group project, with comments like Give more time for group work, just coming together to work in a group is already stressful and I was confused when it came to working in a group and Remove the teamwork aspect. The group project is only in one course, so I know which students don't like working in a group.

I also know that for many of these students, this is the first time they've been asked to work in a group project, so I can understand that it was stressful for them. I already provide a discussion about Tuckman's Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. The next time I teach this course, I will try to leave more time at the beginning for groups to work through Storming and reach Norming by giving small milestone discussion assignments, before the next major project item is due.

A few students commented on needing early access to the course materials, which confused me. All of my courses are designed so that all discussions, assignments, and learning topics are available immediately. Yet some students gave feedback indicating they couldn't access (or find?) the upcoming course content, such as I would like more advance access to materials.

The most clear comment on this topic was also the most detailed: I would like it if the Assignments tab was enabled on the course website because otherwise the only way to get to the assignments is in the weekly modules. This comment suggests the issue is about the usability of the course website; I can see the Assignments tab, but I didn't realize the students could not. I can easily fix this by making the Assignments tab visible to everyone.

This article is adapted from Listening to feedback by Jim Hall, on Coaching Buttons. Follow us on Coaching Buttons for more articles about leading from within and across the organization.