Feedback is a fundamental learning and teaching activity that has a significant impact on student learning and achievement, and as such is an important function of assessment. It has been found that whether or not lecturers provide students with helpful feedback has a bigger impact on student learning and satisfaction than anything else (Gibbs & Simpson, 2005).
What is helpful (effective) feedback?
Although perspectives on feedback vary widely, we do know that students are enthusiastic about feedback, and that they want more and/or better feedback (Dawson et al., 2019).
Feedback that is generally considered most helpful (effective):
- identifies and positively reinforces what was done well
- makes useful suggestions about specific ways students could improve their work or change their approach for future work
- corrects misapprehensions revealed in the work
- is respectful of the individuality and worth of each student
- is timely - it comes when it still matters to students and when they can make the most of it
- enables students to refine their capacity to use information to judge themselves in relation to similar work or situations.
Effective feedback as a dialogue or process
Rather than something that teachers do to students, feedback can instead be understood as a dialogue or process whereby students seek, engage with and act on feedback from multiple sources (Boud, 2015; Boud & Molloy, 2013; Gibbs & Simpson, 2005).
Boud (2015) highlights 3 requirements for an effective feedback process that influences learning:
- Knowledge of appropriate standards (by both the teacher and the student)
- Comparison of one’s own work with these standards
- Taking action to close the gap between the two.
Effective feedback allows students to reduce discrepancies between their current knowledge, understanding and/or performance and a goal. Thus, according to Hattie and Timperley (2007), the process of effective feedback must answer 3 questions:
- Where am I going? (What are the goals?)
- How am I going? (What progress is being made towards the goal?)
- Where to next? (What activities need to be undertaken to make better progress?)
This understanding of effective feedback as a dialogue or process has implications for unit design, teaching and marking students’ work.
Opportunities for feedback on progress should be integrated within many of a unit's learning activities. It is worth noting that students are more likely to engage with feedback when it is provided separately from a mark or grade (Black & Wiliam, 1998). Therefore, if the main intent of an activity is to feed into student development and assist students to improve, it will be most effective if it is not used as a summative assessment.
Unit design and timely feedback
For feedback to be engaged with and acted upon by students, rich, detailed feedback should be redeployed to an early assessment task whilst end-of-semester feedback can instead serve to justify marks. (Boud, 2015)
Unit design and peer feedback
The curriculum should provide opportunities for students to engage with peer feedback from the outset of their studies, emphasising the benefits of reviewing others’ work. (Pitt, Bearman & Esterhazy, 2020)
Clarifying the goals
Good feedback practice helps clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, expected standards). (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006)
For feedback to reduce discrepancies between students’ current knowledge, understanding and/or performance and a goal, the goal must be clear to both teachers and students. It is important that assessment task descriptions and marking criteria (including standards descriptors) are clarified.
Facilitating feedback literacy in students through peer feedback
To act on feedback, students need to be able to:
- appreciate and understand the role of feedback
- make judgements about the quality of their work
- manage their emotions.
These together allow “feedback literate” students to act on feedback. (Carless and Boud, 2018)
Engaging with feedback and acting on it to improve performance is more challenging for some students than others. Providing multiple opportunities for all students to engage with peer feedback throughout their studies (e.g. through scaffolded tasks accompanied by templates) promotes feedback literacy and is associated with improved grades. (Pitt, Bearman & Esterhazy, 2020)
Feedback and planning for future teaching
It is also worth noting that the process of effective feedback provides information to teachers that can be used to help shape future teaching. (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006)
Although ideally opportunities for feedback on progress should be integrated within many of a unit's learning activities, the focus here is on feedback associated with formal assessment tasks.
Rubrics
Highlighting the standards descriptors which reflect the grade achieved against each of the assessment criteria.
Written Comments
Written comments, in addition to the standard descriptor identified for each criterion, often provide specific feedback unique to each student and can be in the form of an overall comment on the task overall, or comments that address each criterion separately. Guidelines for written comments that students are most likely to engage with, and use to improve future performance indicate that they should:
- start by highlighting a strength - something the student has done well (although this can be difficult when the student has failed the criterion, if they have achieved a pass or above, the standard descriptor can provide suggestions for elements to highlight). This can be particularly beneficial when the comment not only identifies what was done well, but also explains why/how it was good. Using the student's name as part of this positive part of the comment personalises it, which can have a powerful effect.
- identify one to three important areas where improvements could be made, and give specific examples and explanations for how they could be improved (these are most beneficial when the examples and explanations are forward looking - they can be used to make improvements to future work and assessments). When determining the areas for improvement, look at the ILOs for the unit to help you to include only those aspects which are most important and relevant for the learning in your unit.
- end on a note of encouragement - but make sure that it is truthful and sincere. For example, "you are showing clear improvement in your use of evidence" or "You had some interesting ideas that made me think".
Note that written comments can take quite some time to formulate when ensuring that they are meaningful to students, and written as recommended above.
Audio or video comments
Rather than providing written comments, you could provide students with audio or video recorded comments. This may even be more time efficient when providing feedback to large student cohorts (Broadbent, Panadero, & Boud, 2018).
Just as with written comments, these could be specific to each criterion or could provide comments on the task overall. You could also consider providing the entire student cohort with generic audio or video feedback identifying common strengths and errors in task or exam submissions (e.g., in a MyLO announcement).
To provide students with individual audio or video feedback, you could:
- Use the Record Audio or the Record Video button in the MyLO Evaluate Submissions page to make and share a short audio or video recording.
- Record audio or video feedback using separate software and attach as a file in the MyLO Evaluate Submissions page. Some software (including Microsoft Stream) will automatically generate closed captions and a searchable transcript.
To provide students with generic audio or video feedback, you could:
- Use the Video Note tool in MyLO to record and share your feedback (e.g., in an announcement). You can select to auto-generate captions if you wish.
- Record audio or video feedback using separate software and attach as a file in the MyLO Evaluate Submissions page. Some software (including Microsoft Stream) will automatically generate closed captions and a searchable transcript.
One to one meetings
Sometimes it may be more time efficient to ask students to book in for 10 minute feedback sessions after returning their work, grades, and rubric feedback. In this way students receive personal feedback, inclusive of the opportunity to ask questions in order to receive feedback on areas of concern or interest to them.
This approach can also work well if students do not receive your grade prior to attending, but use the rubric to self-assess and award a grade. The two can then be compared and provide useful points for discussion during the meeting.
Useful links
The University of New South Wales has an interesting page that discusses a range of approaches to providing feedback to students.
References and further reading
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1), 7-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050102
Boud, D., & Molloy, E. (2013). Rethinking models of feedback for learning: the challenge of design. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(6), 698-712. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2012.691462
Boud, D. (2015). Feedback: Ensuring that it leads to enhanced learning. The Clinical Teacher Clin Teach, 12(1), 3-7. https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.12345
Carless, D., & Boud, D. (2018): The development of student feedback literacy: enabling uptake of feedback, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), 1315-1325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354
Dawson, P., Henderson, M., Mahoney, P., Phillips, M., Ryan, T., Boud, D., & Molloy, E. (2019). What makes for effective feedback: staff and student perspectives. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(1), 25-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1467877
Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1, 3-31.
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane‐Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199-218. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090
Pitt, E., Bearman, M., & Esterhazy, R. (2020). The conundrum of low achievement and feedback for learning. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45(2), 239-250. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1630363
