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Detailed Assignment Feedback with MS Word Markup Tools

CSI Staff

Staff Writer

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: March-April 2005

Category: » Tech-skills-software » Microsoft-word

Many UMUC instructors want to be able to provide substantive in-line feedback to students on their papers and projects—as they did in the "good old days" of handwritten markup of papers. But at the same time, instructors need to be able to return the papers electronically and don't want to have to recreate lengthy handwritten comments in the WebTycho Gradebook. One solution is to mark up the papers on-screen and send the markups back to students via the Gradebook as attachments. But how does one read student papers on-screen without eye strain, and are there easy ways to markup papers electronically?

There are several ways you can "comfortize" your on-screen view of a document, and MS Word's markup tools are quite efficient for providing in-line feedback on student work. Here are basic suggestions for editing student documents electronically, using MS Word tools (most points apply to Excel as well as to Word):

Using MS-Word's Markup Tools

MS-Word has several markup tools which can be quite helpful to a reviewer. However, these tools are not displayed by default and many users may not be aware of their existence. These tools can help with a variety of techniques, including those described below.

Instructions on enabling these markup tools can be found at View/Turn on MS Word's markup tools.

Customizing the Screen View

Users can customize their screen view in a number of ways to increase viewing comfort. For some this means reducing the screen resolution or increasing the magnification to see larger fonts. For others, it means the opposite, increasing the screen resolution to be able to see more of a document at once. Another option is to use the full-screen editing mode.

Step-by-step directions on some of these techniques are available from Customize your screen view of a document to increase viewing comfort.

Using the Highlighting, Comments, and Font-Color Tools

An effective means of marking up assignments is by using color. This can be effective for highlighting particular items of a student's work, or simply for distinguishing the faculty member's comments from the student's original work. The color of the text itself can be altered, or highlighting can be applied which changes the background of the text (this akin to using a classic yellow highlighter on paper).

In addition, MS-Word provides the means to "embed" more lengthy comments within the body of the text. This way, the comments do affect the overall flow of the text, but can be inserted at the relevant point.

Directions for using these tools can be read at Use MS Word's highlighting, comments, and/or font color tools.

Track Changes

Sometimes it is particularly effective to rewrite, reword, or otherwise modify the original text directly. MS-Word provides a powerful tool called Track Changes which allows these changes to be made without eliminating the original text. What makes this tool all the more powerful is that it allows a comparison between the original text and the edited one.

Instructions on use of the Track Changes tool can be found at Use MS Word's Track Changes tools.

Miscellaneous Tools

Two other tools that might be useful are endnotes that allow insertion of lengthy comments that show up at the end of a document, but reference the relevant location of the comment, and callouts, which are similar to comments, but are actually super-imposed over text, a spreadsheet, or an image.

Information on using these tools is available at A few other MS Word tools to consider.

URLs of Links Used on This Page

• View/Turn on MS Word's markup tools
  http://info.umuc.edu/de/ezine/how_to/feedback/markuptools.htm
• Customize your screen view of a document to increase viewing comfort
  http://info.umuc.edu/de/ezine/how_to/feedback/screenview.htm
• Use MS Word's highlighting, comments, and/or font color tools
  http://info.umuc.edu/de/ezine/how_to/feedback/highlightingcolor.htm
• Use MS Word's Track Changes tools
  http://info.umuc.edu/de/ezine/how_to/feedback/trackchanges.htm
• A few other MS Word tools to consider
  http://info.umuc.edu/de/ezine/how_to/feedback/misctools.htm