E. Mitchells' Communicate 4.1.1 – Evaluation Methods and Communication Practices Quest

• How do communication practices in the online environment correlate to effective feedback?
• Communication practices establish an environment of comfort that an online instructor and have with their students.  By not getting to know their students better, one may be hesitant to be critical of their work.  By establishing an environment of open communication, an instructor should feel comfortable providing the necessary feedback to students in a manner that fits that student best.  Maybe some need to hear it in a voice recording while others could easily read feedback and not have the details misconstrued. 
• Why is authentic feedback important for online learners?
• This is important for progress purposes.  In the class I teach, I am ultimately looking ahead to the national exam.  My goal is to make sure students are abundantly prepared and don't feel lost or confused going into the exam.  That means checking their comprehension of topics along the way is important.  In all honesty, I grade nightly, even on the weekends.  This instant gratification for my students I feel is necessary especially when preparing themselves for unit assessments.  Additionally, I think authentic feedback makes the online classroom more real to them...like a traditional class.  Things I may comment to my face-to-face students I should also comment to my online students.  I want them to know I do truly care about their success and authentic feedback gives me a way to provide that to them.
• In what ways might an instructor enrich a student’s online experience through feedback?
• With authentic feedback, one of the things I like to do is provide links to additional resources for further information about the topics we are studying.  Additionally I suggest books to read that match our unit content.  I also provide encouragement for trying new websites to produce work, like Weebly or Voki.  I want to encourage them to move out of their routine and feel it is important to acknowledge more than just the work they produced--give them a purpose which students ask so many times "When am I ever going to have to know this in real life"---easy to find answers in psychology =)