Incorporating Feedback into Collaborative Learning

Back in 2017, my team had a simple but powerful ritual. We held "I have a design challenge" meetings, where someone would bring a project they were working on, and we’d workshop it together. These sessions weren’t just about fixing problems. They helped us grow our skills as a team and learn from each other’s perspectives. In 2024, I wanted to bring that same energy to learning designers looking to level up their skills in a fun and engaging way. This time, I turned to Tim Slade’s eLearning Challenges but took a different approach. Instead of just participating, we started doing live reviews of the challenge winners. How It Works One person drives the meeting, screensharing the challenge winner’s eLearning project while recording the session. We pause at each screen and ask two simple but high-impact questions: ✅ What worked well and why? ✅ What would you do differently and why? This sparks rich discussions on everything from instructional design and accessibility to visual design and interactivity. Everyone brings their unique expertise, turning the meeting into a collaborative learning experience. Want to Try It? Here’s What You Need ✔️ A web conferencing tool with recording capabilities ✔️ Adobe Premiere Pro or a transcript tool (optional, but helpful) ✔️ A generative AI tool like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude (optional for extracting themes from discussions) After the session, we take the recording and import it into Adobe Premiere, which generates a transcript in seconds. Then, using GenAI, we pull key themes, quotes, and takeaways, turning raw discussions into actionable insights. Why This Works This approach takes learning from passive to interactive. You’re not just seeing best practices. You’re critically analyzing them with peers, learning through feedback, and refining your own instructional design instincts. Would you try this with your team? Have you tried something similar? What worked well? #InstructionalDesign #GenAI #LearningDesign #eLearning #AIinLearning #CourseDevelopment #DigitalLearning #IDStrategy #EdTech #eLearningDesign #LearningTechnology #InnovationInLearning #CustomerEducation

The best way to teach brainstorming? Let students brainstorm your teaching approach. Today, our design thinking class at the University of Kentucky, TEK 300, "Teens and Screens," reached a pivotal moment. With midterms behind us and spring break over, we faced a critical question: How might we structure the remaining weeks to promote deeper understanding rather than just blasting through the steps of our semester-long project? Instead of deciding for our students, we chose to "eat our own dog food"(as they used to say at Apple). (HT Reinhold Steinbeck, charles kerns) We turned our students into users and co-designers through a structured brainwriting session focused on this challenge. The process was beautifully simple: • Students received worksheets with our "How Might We" question and a 3×5 grid • Everyone silently wrote initial ideas (one per box) in the first row • Sheets rotated three times, with each person building on or adding to previous ideas • We ended with a gallery walk and dot-voting to identify the strongest concepts In just 20 minutes, we generated over 50 unique ideas! The winner? Incorporating hands-on, interactive activities in every session that directly connect to that day's learning objectives. The meta-realization? We were already practicing the solution before formally adopting it. The brainwriting exercise itself exemplified exactly what our students told us they wanted more of. My teaching partner Ryan Hargrove immediately began storyboarding how we'll implement this approach, moving us closer to the collaborative learning journey we want to have with our students. We're moving from "Once upon a time..." (not as great as we could be...) to "Students designed..." (active participation), to "Now we really dig learning all this..." Your students already know what they need; your job is to create space for them to tell you. P.S. What teaching approaches have you transformed by inviting your students to become co-designers of their learning experience? #DesignThinking #HigherEducation #TeachingInnovation #BuildingInPublic #StudentCenteredLearning

Too often, offering students feedback is an exercise in compliance. The professor offers feedback, and expects the students to incorporate all of it. (It’s like the professor is giving items on a checklist. The subtext: “do these things and I’ll give you an A.”) But I want my students to think about feedback differently. I want them to be able to cut between different sets of feedback, connecting them to each other and linking them back to their own understanding. With that in mind… Here’s the feedback cycle I’ve designed for my Comp II students at Berkeley. 1️⃣ Self-Assessment Students use their own self-designed rubric to evaluate their own performance. 2️⃣ Peer Assessment Students get feedback and assessment from other students. 3️⃣ Instructor Assessment I’ll offer feedback on the assignment. 4️⃣ AI Assessment Students get feedback from a custom chatbot. I will be incorporating some of Anna Mills’s prompts for the PAIRR framework. 5️⃣ Assessment Assessment (or Reflection) Students apply the different assessments to their own self-assessment. They defend their ultimate edits within the context of their Self-Empowering Writing Process (SEWP).