Floop: An innovative way to give feedback!

By Melissa Christlieb

On Friday, February 4th I attended the SD STEM Education conference in Huron, SD. During one of the presentations, we learned about the website named Floop. This website is a tool for teachers to use when grading and giving feedback to students online.

With this website, teachers are able to make assignments for students and the students use Floop to turn in the assignments electronically. On the teachers' side of this website, you are able to insert comments, write on the assignments, give audio comments and see who has read and replied to your comments. If a student replies to comment it will flag the assignment as if they just submit something. I think this would be very helpful for teachers so that a student's comment does not go unseen. As a teacher, you can select to see who has turned in the assignment and who hasn’t. Floop also keeps a bank of your previous comments made which can be reused for different students.

This website is able to be accessed on a mobile device, iPad, tablet, or computer. This makes it super easy for students to take a picture of their assignment and upload it to Floop. In Floop students are able to peer review their classmate's assignments anonymously, and it also gives them prompts for giving feedback to others.

Another thing that was talked about during this presentation is what descriptive feedback is. Descriptive feedback is more than just saying ‘Good job!’. It is giving thoughtful responses to questions and engages with students about the work they have completed. This includes positive feedback on their work as well as where they might have made a mistake or could improve their work.

In math education, this website can be very beneficial because students can get feedback from the teacher or their peers immediately. Students are also able to have conversations with their teacher in the comment section. Floop allows grading to be done in a timely matter and allows teachers to give descriptive feedback to more than one student easier.