The instructor will provide regular feedback on the project development blog throughout the duration of the project to guide students and help them improve their work. There are a few key ways the instructor will provide feedback:
Progress updates: For each major milestone or phase of the project, students will be expected to create blog posts documenting their progress, challenges faced, and next steps. The instructor will review these posts and leave comments providing guidance and suggestions to help students stay on track. Comments will point out what’s going well and what could be improved. The instructor may suggest additional areas students should consider or expand upon in their work. This will help students course-correct as needed throughout the project.
Code/document reviews: For certain milestones, students may be asked to share partial or full implementations of code, prototypes, documents, or other creative work for the instructor to reviewed. The instructor will then leave detailed, written feedback on these submissions. Comments will identify bugs, inefficiencies, missing elements, stylistic issues and more for students to address. This allows the instructor to provide hands-on guidance to improve technical and creative aspects of the work.
Discussion participation: Students are strongly encouraged to start blog post comments threads to discuss challenges and solicit peer input. The instructor will actively participate in these discussions, adding their own expertise and experiences to help brainstorm solutions. They may suggest additional resources students could consult or point students toward campus support services if a problem seems particularly difficult. Engaging in discussions also helps the instructor identify where concepts seem to be confusing for multiple students to address those knowledge gaps.
Private feedback: For sensitive issues like personal struggles that may be affecting work, students can choose to contact the instructor privately through email or online meeting instead of posting publicly. The instructor will then tailor feedback to support each individual student’s well-being and progress while maintaining confidentiality as needed.
Formative assessment: Throughout the blogging process, the instructor is continuously formatively assessing students’ understanding, skills, time management, collaboration, and other competencies related to successfully completing the project. Feedback aims to nurture growth in these areas as well as the technical/creative development of the work. The instructor may suggest students focus more on planning, improve their communication, etc.
Summative assessment: Near major milestones and at the end of the project, the instructor will leave concluding feedback summarizing what students have accomplished as well as any remaining areas still needing further growth or refinement before the work is complete. This summative feedback helps students assess their own learning and development over the full timeline of the project.
For each blog post, the instructor will aim to leave feedback within 48 hours so students get a timely response. Comments will be helpful, constructive, and actionable to move work forward productively. The goal is to use continuous feedback loops to support students building excellent technical and soft skills throughout the project experience via the reflection and guidance the blog fosters. Providing feedback on the development blog ensures students stay on track to create high quality end products they can be proud of while continuously developing as professionals.
Andrew Stroud