Rose Cafe with Dr. Cynthia Hill was probably the most directly beneficial Rose Cafe any of the students have experienced. Dr. Hill discussed several commonly used terms and symbols when professors grade student work.

From check marks, to striking a line through words, to really in depth comments in the margins of our notebook paper– these are things students have seen since the day we entered the educational system. It was interesting to see how differently my peers reacted to these common symbols. Many viewed a check mark as encouragement, while others saw it as relief. I can recall feelings of sheer enthusiasm from seeing a check mark on my paper in my kindergarten days, but that enthusiasm slowly faded to relief, as the frequency of question marks and crosses increased.

Now, I seemed to have a much more passive take on the comments my professor’s leave on my work. I suspect because I am in a relatively hard-science major, Computer Science, where my teachers comments have never really been very constructive. I learn the best when I compare my answers to the solutions. When I am coding for a project, I know which parts of my project run smoothly, and which don’t, so when my professor runs a unique test case, I am not surprised by his comment “Test case 4 failed.” Neither does his comment give me an constructive criticism.

However, Dr. Hill’s comments about taking the professors red marks on our papers to make future assignments better is more than important for my humanities classes. Without taking into consideration the reaction my professor had to my writing, there is no way I can succeed in the class.

All in all this Rose Cafe reiterated the importance of reading the professors comments, an idea that my coding classes had caused me to forget.

The Rose cafe with Dr. Cynthia Hill revolved around how to get the most of the feedback you get from professors.

One topic Dr. Hill focused on was that getting feedback should be treated as the start of a conversation. Even if it the final draft of a paper, the feedback can help guide you when you are writing the next paper in the class. I can relate this to an experience I had in a philosophy class I took earlier in my Cornell career. I remember writing a paper that relied too strongly on economic arguments, and not on the topics we discussed in class. I was trying to shove too many lens into one paper. One mistake people make is taking criticism to mean that they just have to shape the paper more to professor’s liking just because that’s what he/she like. I think this is the wrong mindset to have. The professor has a lot of years of experience in the field, and he/she is trying to help acquaint you with that field. In my case, I focused more on making my philosophical arguments stronger in the next paper. This, of course, helped my grade, but even I could see that it was a much better paper than the jumbled one I handed in before.

The conversation did make me miss having classes outside computer science and math which I have primarily taken these past 2 semesters. There really isn’t the same opportunity for a conversation regarding a project. In particular, the comp sci department is so overfilled that having an ongoing conversation with a professor is much tougher. In general though, the feedback cycle lends its to the liberal sciences more than STEM, at least at the undergrad level.

Even still, I do get feedback from TAs in my computer science classes, especially when I do something wrong. Like Dr. Hill emphasized, it is important to really study that feedback. The TAs usually identify a weak point you have in the material. It is important to address these weak points instead of letting them pile up and failing your exam.

Last week, Cynthia Hill facilitated a discussion on how we interpret the feedback that we receive on papers in both the scientific and humanities field. Whether it is one word comments, gold stars, paragraphs, or checkmarks, feedback can be very valuable. In doing so we, we discovered that there are different motivations and approaches we have to interpreting the feedback. Some of us read the feedback to see how we can improve for the next paper, while others look at the feedback to justify the grade we received. On the flip side, we evaluated the methods of beginning papers and the contrasts we see between when we are given a rubric versus when are given an open topic. Importantly, Hill reminded us that feedback is given ultimately for us to learn and what we do with that feedback, whether it is from teachers, peers, or ourselves, influences what we can gain from our own work.

I appreciated the reminder to make the most of our experiences and learn from the feedback. Yet the discussion about rubrics, grading systems, and writing strategies reminded me about how schooling systems can both inhibit and enhance creativity. For example, giving rubrics and guidelines for what is expected in an essay can limit one’s thought process, and instill the fear to write what is perceived as correct. At the same time, it can ensure detailed thinking of topics that one is unfamiliar with, research and explicate more clearly. In a broader sense, teaching requires presenting a set of guidelines that are expected to be met by all students. Yet just by this small discussion, we have discovered that not everyone brainstorms the same way, or thrives to write with the same guidelines. As a result, it is impossible to cater to everyone’s needs. While this may seem like an unsettling point, we can only assume that the best teachings, the ones that deserve extra gold stars, are the ones that instill the willingness to learn, the curiosity to explore, and the perseverance to excel.

This past week, Professor Cynthia Hill talked to us about what to do with the feedback that we receive in our classes. What does it mean when the Professor marks ok on your paper? good? awk? We dove into what these terms might mean to each student. As we soon learned, much of the feedback we get back is about the writing style or grammar rather than the ideas within the assignments. Perhaps we received feedback for an awkward sentence structure, a small grammatical error, or diction choice that just doesn’t fit. Oftentimes, when we only receive feedback on the writing of our paper, we miss the opportunity to discuss and develop novel ideas. We also talked about how the use of rubrics can constrain creativity by coaxing the student to follow guidelines for the grade.

I found this to be a particularly insightful point about the feedback we so often receive as students. I immediately thought of what has worked for me with regard to the work I have produced at Cornell. During one of my classes, my Professor slowed down the writing process by making outlines and drafts due over the course of one month and having mandatory conferences. I never received a grade on my drafts, and she always returned them with a lot of feedback. Since the class was structured this way, a fantastic opportunity to discuss not only my own writing style, but also the ideas within my paper with my Professor. It was during these one-on-one conversations that I brought an interesting argument to fruition. I wonder if this structure could be helpful in focusing on ideas rather than grammar in other courses.

Over my last three years at Cornell, I have submitted several assignments, projects, and problem sets and received different feedback for each one them. I believe feedback helps students identify their strengths and weaknesses, but can only be useful if a student actually takes the time to read it. Cynthia Hill’s talk about instructor feedback opened our eyes to the value that feedback can add to a student’s education and how it can hinder students from thinking creatively. Often times, instructors try to mold their students into a version of themselves by providing feedback that caters to their own academic criteria. Grading rubrics are the medium through which instructors exert their academic power over their students. By forcing them to adopt the rubric, instructors narrow the students’ thought processes and limit them to producing what is written on the paper. On the other hand, if instructors didn’t give out a grading rubric, students would have more freedom in terms of approaching the assignment but might also be at risk of missing an important component of the assignment.

The controversy that surrounds instructor feedback raises the question if the feedback itself is ineffective or if the student is refusing to look at the feedback in the first place. A lot of students look for the letter grade before looking at the feedback. If they end up getting a good grade, they disregard the feedback assuming that it is mostly positive. However, a high score on an assignment doesn’t always entail positive feedback because the grader can point out the flaws in the students work while addressing the strengths of the assignment. Additionally, sometimes the feedback is insufficient for the student to deduce what they did well or bad in the assignment. If the the grader only focuses on the strengths of the assignment, the student might not be able to figure out his or her weaknesses. It is imperative that instructor feedback provide a balanced review of a student’s work that will enrich their understanding of the concepts and ideas covered in the class.

Last week the Rose Scholars had a discussion with Cynthia Hill, a visiting researcher interested mostly in biology teaching and learning at the undergraduate level. She talked to us about what corrections mean when we, the students, see them on our written works. Most of the time, students may not look forward to having “red ink smeared across their paper,” because it gives a sense of failure instead of doing a good job. However, corrections are what ultimately help a student become a better writer and should be seen as a helping tool instead of a nuisance.

Much of what a teacher or teacher’s assistant writes on a formal or informal essay is to assist the student in finding ways to better communicate their ideas. It’s very easy to type out an essay and think that it is perfect, even after a thorough revision, and miss grammar mistakes, odd sentence structures, and forget to connect the various ideas to the overall topic of the essay. It could be a great portrayal of one’s thoughts, but if the supporting paragraphs do not really connect, then there is no point. Outlining one’s ideas to try and organize them before writing can help one plan out what they are going to write, in what order, and see if the ideas flow and make sense. For some, it does not help because one usually goes back and revises one’s work later on, so simply writing an essay and then going back and revising it multiple times may be a better technique.

Ultimately, the hardest but most essential part of writing any piece of information, whether it be for a psychology, science, or english course, is to have one’s own voice when communicating. It helps grab the readers attention and makes the piece of literature more engaging to read instead of a bland straight forward report. Though there are times when one must simply report the facts, there is a way to insert emotion when conveying an informative topic. It was really helpful to sit down and chat with Mrs. Hill; she is passionate not only about biology but also about helping all students find ways to better their writing skills and enjoy talking about their subject matter. As a communication major, I understand the necessity to be a great writer and appreciated the thoughtfulness she presented during our discussion.

For this week’s Rose Café, Dr. Cynthia Hill had an interesting approach to her main point, transitioning from feedback from professors to what you want out of college. At the heart of her discussion, it seems that she wants us to wonder about how we want to take advantage of college. While the conversation about the essay feedback from professors was quite useful in deciphering what professors want out of us, my impression was it was a metaphor for continually thinking about what you are doing right now and whether or not that is what you want to do. Feedback will help you revise your essay and similarly, understanding what and why you are doing something at this moment will give you greater insight and context. Obviously my main goal is to do well in classes and learn material that hopefully shapes my skills in the future, even if the content is long forgotten due to rare usage. I often go to my TA or professor to get feedback on my papers because I genuinely want to know what I did wrong because often it is fundamental errors that can be fixed in the future. I don’t have the luxury (might be a good thing though) of writing papers every semester so there is always a bit of “rust” at first but every piece of advice and assimilating critique is useful. Engaging the professor before and after a writing assignment I find to be extremely useful because you can often tailor it to something that you like and enjoy. Aside from that, I want to make sure that I am taking advantage of the large campus, diverse student population and broadening my views. College offers an incredible amount of freedom in opportunity, interest and engaging with people in a “closed environment.” It is sort of a sandbox between adolescence and adulthood. I am constantly trying to go out of my comfort zone and join and do new things because if I seem to fail here, there is no harm. Plus it becomes a sort of a lifestyle because I would be over the initial hump of uncertainty and hesitance, allowing me to do things I probably wouldn’t have considered otherwise once I graduate.

One thing I plan to do is visit the Fuertes Observatory, something I didn’t even realize we had on campus that was close by. Astronomy and stars has always fascinated me so I definitely want to check that out. People often say you should do the “161 things” that a Cornellian should do but I see those as guidelines and modify them for my interests. The point is to not be stuck in a library all day and try to make time to explore Cornell. It is a big place after all. Practicing this balance now is far more beneficial because you can mess up and potentially not be subjected to too much trouble. With this experience, it becomes valuable later on and bolster your decision-making when trying to balance work and life. What do you plan on doing at Cornell that you didn’t consider before?

This past Wednesday, I had the privilege of participating in an engaging discussion with House Fellow Cynthia Hill. To begin the discussion, Mrs. Hill began with holding up cards to show common corrections that we see on papers; from ‘awk’ to the dreaded ‘?’ nearly all of the symbols were familiar to me as something that I have seen on a paper I get back from professors and teachers throughout my academic career.

I never really considered analyzing what these symbols really meant. What does a check exemplify? Good? Average? Decent? What do you do when you receive an “awk”? Mrs. Hill went on to explain that a lot of what we see from written feedback is how the person is framing what they expect from us and from our writing. We also talked about the use of rubrics and how we utilize rubrics when we get them from an instructor. For the majority of us, a rubric is almost a godsend; it provides us with the necessary criteria that we know we have to put in our papers.

Mrs. Hill’s facilitation of this interesting topic really made me think about the elements of writing a paper and how to interpret feedback. Sometimes, when we see that we received the grade we wanted, we don’t even bother to look at the feedback that our professors may have provided. After this talk, I’m a little more cognizant of the value of feedback and that it’s okay to question the different vague symbols used.

This week’s Rose Cafe was an engaging conversation led by Dr. Cynthia Hill where we talked about how to best utilize the feedback we get on assignments from professors to grow and learn- not only to get a better grade next time, but to actually learn.

I think this to me was an important and refreshing takeaway from the talk. We are so used to working hard and have spent our whole life working towards getting good grades for important things like college that we have forgotten what the real purpose of education is. While grades are undoubtedly important, I think this talk reminded me about what what classes and college in general are actually about- to learn, grow, expand the mind and acquire important life skills like critical thinking and problem solving. It was definitely a refreshing reminder.

However, this also reminded me that learning shouldn’t stop just because you get a good grade- even if you get an A+ in a class, there is still potential to learn by trying to understand and meaningfully engage with the feedback you receive. Even a paper with a great grade probably has some feedback on it.

Another interesting topic we discusses was rubrics. In my opinion, rubrics can be useful depending on how the rubric is written, and depending on the class. For example, I took a Web Programming last semester where there was a clear rubric given out of 30 points and each point on the rubric was a clear instruction of a task we had to do in order to receive a point, such as “Validate code”. In this case, this is clearly helpful as I know specifically and exactly what to do to get points. However, in many humanities or writing focused classes I have taken, rubrics can often be vague and unhelpful, with phrases like “Uses sophisticated and effective language to convey an idea”. The problem with rubrics like this is firstly that they seem to convey things already implicit- of course I’m trying to write in a “sophisticated and effective” manner! In addition, phrases like this are extremely subjective and there is no way to know just by looking at the rubric if you got points for “effective” writing or not. I think for rubrics like these, it would be beneficial for professors to go over them in detail and give examples of what “effective” writing looks like in the context of the assignment and class.

Overall, this talk was extremely interesting and made me rethink my outlook on classes, college, self-growth and learning in general. In the future, I definitely want to try to shift my approach to homework with the goal of learning- rather than simply getting an A- in mind.

This week’s Rose Café was focused on feedback that students receive from instructors. The talk made me think about the importance of learning from feedback on writing assignments. It also reminded me of multiple times when I received a paper from a professor and had difficulty interpreting their comments. Often, I will go to a professors’ office hours to discuss the feedback to get a better understanding of how my writing could be improved. However, often the most important written assignment is due at the end of the semester and I never could discuss the paper with my professor. This is frustrating because a letter grade is not enough feedback for me to improve my writing with. On the other hand, some of my professors have provided extremely detailed and thoughtful feedback which has helped me improve my writing skills. One professor would provide detailed feedback before the final paper was due which allowed me time to refine my writing. This process seems more consistent with how writing works in the real world. During my internships, coworkers would frequently ask each other for feedback on their writing before publishing or submitting their work.

There was also a discussion about rubrics. I have mixed feelings about rubrics. On one hand, they help focus my writing and help me ensure that I am meeting the requirements of the assignment. However, rubrics also constrain creativity. All things considered, I would prefer not to be constrained by a rubric, but I still appreciate some direction about the requirements of an assignment. Speaking of feedback, feel free to leave a comment.

Regardless of major or area of study, I think every student has at one point received a piece of unclear or vague feedback on a paper that has left them thinking ‘…what?’ All those ‘OK’s and ‘?’s can be a source of frustration and confusion for students but interpreting that ‘code’ of feedback was the topic of discussion in this week’s Rose Cafe. Led by Ms. Cynthia Hill, we engaged in a conversation about instructor feedback, its value, and tips for taking advantage of it.

One of the major talking points was about rubrics and outlines. Personally, I think that rubrics are helpful for both the grader and the student, but are also a bit problematic in that they ‘box’ a writer in and stifle creativity. I think my best pieces of writing came from me writing freely and naturally, rather than a more formulaic approach. However, as an engineering student, my experience with humanity courses are a bit limited so it was really interesting to hear other people’s strategies for approaching essays, and how much of an impact instructor feedback is.

Although the topic of the night was not about how to achieve high grades, the conversation inevitably turned to grading many times – perhaps a mark on how the educational system ingrains students with an emphasis on exam scores. With all the required standardised testing with SATs and AP exams, so many of my high school classes were taught specifically toward the test. This is why I think an instructor’s feedback is so much more meaningful than the grade received. Feedback of every kind allows us to grow and learn, more so than any arbitrarily assigned grade; and I really wish I had realised this earlier. Obviously, I’m not any sort of education expert, but from my own experiences, the most meaningful and memorable classes are the ones more focused on learning rather than on exam scores.

On Wednesday evening, I attended the Rose Cafe hosted by House Fellow Cynthia Hill. To be completely honest, I went in not knowing what the topic was. But as she started, it slowly became clear and the conversation was very exciting. Cynthia started on the topic of reflecting on your written work and then allowed us as the audience to provide input and get to the point of the talk by ourselves.

Cognitive goals. That was my key takeaway. When I’m given a writing assignment, it’s usually a vague topic. I’ll create an outline and just write with hopes to reach the word count and get a good grade. However, I really didn’t think about the goal of an assignment. What is the cognitive goal? Why am I doing this assignment?

Cynthia really made me think about extending myself and really getting an education rather than a degree. Learn from each assignment I complete rather than finish hurriedly and do it to get the grade. Take some time to consider all of the grader’s comments and learn from them, not just to earn a better grade on the next assignment, but also to truly learn from all the mistakes and improve overall.