Project Based Learning Step 6: Critique, Revision and Reflection

Project Based Learning Step 6:
Critique, Revision and Reflection

Educate students by checking on their progress and providing suggestions.
Empower students with skills to critique and revise their work.

Inspire students to want to improve their work to levels of excellence.

Feedback for Critique and Revision

Projects often fail when student work is not checked during the process. When the final product is submitted, it is too late. Therefore, critique and feedback must occur at multiple points throughout the process. This feedback can come from the teacher, from peers or through self-evaluation.

When students learn to give and receive feedback (and assess their own work), they become empowered to revise their ideas/products and produce better work.

Ways to leverage technology to foster critique and revision:

• Schoology: Post rubrics or checklists in Schoology as an assignment and have partners fill it out and sign off on it before students submit it. An idea for a digital signature is to have students insert an image of themselves as the editor. This also works to facilitate self-assessment of work.
• Seesaw--Have students record their feedback about an assignment using the video recorder.
• Peergrade--You can use this website to facilitate peer evaluations. Students upload files and classmates are then assigned to evaluate a series of assignments and provide feedback. Students can review feedback given to them. Teachers can see this as well.
• Screencasting--Students can create a screencast of their critique by talking through their peer review and sharing it with their partner. Screencastify works well on Chromebooks. Seesaw can be used in grades E-2. Teachers can use Screencastify or Screencast-O-Matic.
• Kami--This is a great tool for students to annotate pdf copies of classmates' work.
• Google comments--Use the comments tools in Google to pose questions or post observations.
• Google suggesting mode--Use this mode in Google docs to show revision suggestions. Here is one English teacher's suggestion for adding revision suggestions with comments and suggesting mode.

Reflection

Students should reflect on what they are learning as well as how they are learning it. During this process, they should also reflect on their project's design and implementation. While some of the strategies above can work for this step, here are some additional strategies and resources to help you facilitate student reflection:

• BIE Reflection Form
• 40 Reflection Questions
• BIE Research Brief: What can we learn from John Hattie about Project Based Teaching? (part 3)
• BIE Research Brief: What can we learn from John Hattie about Project Based Teaching? (part 4)
• Schoology 
• Post an assignment where students write a reflection or use the audio/video tool to record their self-reflection. Teachers can assign question prompts.
• Create a Test/Quiz where students answer constructed response questions about their work or take a formative assessment on scaffolded skills needed to complete the project.
• Create a Test/Quiz where students check in by indicating their current level of performance on a learning scale.
• Seesaw
• Have students use the video tool to record self reflections about a project or activity.
• Have students use the notes tool to write a self reflection.
• Have students use the camera tool to take a picture of their work and then record a reflection. They can even annotate their work as they reflect.

Teacher Feedback

While it is very important for students to learn how to self-assess and provide feedback, teachers should also be part of this feedback loop.

• Conduct face to face student conferences. If students upload progress work to Schoology or Seesaw ahead of time, the teacher can prepare before the conference.
• Seesaw: Provide comments on student submissions.
• Schoology: Provide feedback on submitted work.
• Rubrics
• Comments
• Audio/Video feedback
• Annotations
• Feedback using Google comments and suggesting mode.
• Video of feedback options for teachers in Schoology.
• Video showing students how to see assignment feedback (old assignment version).
• Video #2 showing assignment feedback, including annotations (old format).
• Using feedback in tests and quiz checks.