Name
Providing Personalized Feedback to Large Courses Through Mail Merge
Date & Time
Wednesday, June 4, 2025, 9:45 AM - 11:45 AM
Cheryl Wachenheim
Description

Traditional classrooms can often offer amble opportunities for regular engagement with students and to provide them personalized feedback. In larger classes and especially for those offered online and/or asynchronously, there can be a lack of opportunity for instructor to student personalized engagement and feedback. Time constraints in particular can inhibit providing individualized feedback in large classes. The objective of this presentation is to demonstrate a tool that facilitates sending targeted and personalized feedback through email messaging to students based on their performance and progress. Using this tool, mail merge, and a straightforward process for developing meaningful individualized feedback, has increased the level of connectedness students report through their end-of-term Student Engagement Surveys and has more than doubled the number of non-course related contacts initiated by students. The following steps comprising the process will be demonstrated: (1) downloading student information from a course management system gradebook; (2) organizing the spreadsheet for mail merge; (3) sorting students into groups to accommodate meaningful feedback (e.g., those who improved more than 10% from previous exam); and (4) sending personalized emails through Mail Merge in Microsoft Word. This will be great!

Location Name
British Columbia/Alberta/Yukon Ballroom
Full Address
The Westin Edmonton
10135 100 St NW
Edmonton AB T5J 0N7
Canada
Session Type
Poster Presentation
Presentation Topic(s)
Practice of Teaching
Number
231
Authors

Cheryl Wachenheim, North Dakota State University