The lowdown on feedback!
Providing effective feedback to students is an important part of their learning journey. Feedback has the potential to significantly impact on students’ learning, but it can be a source of frustration for us as well as our students. Given that the semester is well and truly under way, I thought this week’s blog would be a good opportunity to revisit the concept of feedback.
What is feedback?
The whole concept of feedback has shifted away from the old idea of comments on students’ work to justify the mark awarded. The more current concept of feedback has an explicit focus on improving students’ subsequent learning. Feedback should lead to change.
According to the Australian Government funded Feedback for Learning project website:
‘Feedback is a process in which learners make sense of the information about their performance and use it to enhance the quality of their work or learning strategies’.
Feedback model
A useful way of thinking about feedback is the model presented by Hattie and Timperley (2007): ‘Feed Up, Feed Back, Feed Forward’. In this model, the student considers three questions:
- Feed Up: Where am I going? (what are the goals?)
- Feed Back: How am I going? (what progress is being made towards the goals?)
- Feed Forward: Where to next? (what activities need to be undertaken to make better progress?)
What does effective feedback look like?
The University of Melbourne Teaching and Learning Quality Assurance Committee (2014) lists twelve principles of effective feedback:
- Identifies where students are doing well.
- Identifies where students’ areas of improvement are, and offers ideas and suggestions about how to approach these.
- Is clearly related to future assessment tasks, and is designed to help students prepare for them.
- Wherever possible, is formative and not summative.
- Is explicit.
- Is constructive, and treats student learning as a developmental rather than a deficit issue.
- Is timely enough so that it can be used by students in preparing for future assessment and in engaging with the subject matter.
- Is provided in sufficient amount of detail.
- Is provided in contexts where students can ask questions about the feedback, provide it to each other, and discuss their interpretation of it with each other.
- Is pitched at an appropriate level.
- Is stated clearly and, if written, is legible.
- Explains how and why students received the mark they did in assessment tasks.
Feedback can take a variety of forms and can be formal or informal. Feedback does not always need to be provided by us as academics. It can also be provided by other students, a product of student self-reflection or automated. A lot of academics’ regular actions are part of the feedback process, yet we may not have thought to view these actions as feedback.
Feedback tips….
Here are some handy tips to help you improve the quality of your feedback processes with students.
- Design some group activities in class where students discuss and work together to identify how best to approach a required task. Provide feedback to the group on what they are doing well and on where other approaches may be more appropriate.
- Provide adequate time in lectures or tutorials to discuss an approaching assessment item to ensure students have clarity around the expectations and requirements of the task.
- Discuss ‘model’ examples of student approaches to assessment before the due date, and explain how and why they are appropriate.
- Reduce the need for negative feedback by providing annotated exemplars on your course LMS supported with a discussion board, frequently asked questions, and time devoted to guiding the assessment task in class (see earlier points).
- When responding to a student email query, amend the subject line by inserting the words ’Feedback about your inquiry’ prior to the existing subject line title.
- Kick off your class with a general response to any email queries received since the last class. Chances are that if several students emailed you during the week with similar questions, other students will have the same query.
- Provide general feedback comments via an announcement on your university’s LMS prior to releasing the marks for an assessment item.
- Develop a standardised repository of feedback responses that can be copied/pasted into student work, detailing why something is good or needs improvement. Make individualised tweaks as required.
- Use e-tools where appropriate. These can include rubrics or annotated grading systems such as Speed Grader.
- Consider recording a personalised message for each student to reduce over-emphasis on written feedback.
- Encourage students to ask questions about their feedback to ensure they have clarity about the action they need to take to improve their learning journey.
- Design your assessment tasks in a scaffolded manner so students can act on previous feedback in the subsequent assessment. Feedback becomes more meaningful when it informs future practice.
- Let students know you are providing them with feedback by using the ‘feedback’ word frequently during class. It reminds students that feedback comes in many forms other than just written comments on a marked assessment item.
- When providing feedback, use language that can be easily understood by students, including international students.
Questions related to feedback tend to dominate student survey instruments used by universities to assess good teaching. Paying attention to your feedback processes will inevitably result in an increase in your good teaching scores.
I would love to hear your feedback about my blog! Please leave your comments in the section below.
References
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
The University of Melbourne Teaching and Learning Quality Assurance Committee (2014). Providing effective feedback to students. October 2014.
Dr Meredith Tharapos is the Undergraduate Program Manager and Senior Lecturer in the School of Accounting at RMIT University. She has over twenty-five years’ experience teaching in universities within Melbourne, in addition to teaching on a regular basis in Asia for RMIT’s international partners. Prior to joining full-time academe, she gained experience in the accounting profession, the ASX, and undertook volunteer work at several not-for-profit organisations in Papua New Guinea and China.
She is an active member of the accounting education community through her roles as Convenor of the annual RMIT Accounting Educators’ Conference, and committee member of the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ) Accounting Education Special Interest Group.
Meredith’s student-centred teaching approach, underpinned by her research surrounding cultural intelligence, is based around the generation of a supportive and inclusive learning environment. She has had the honour of receiving a number of teaching excellence awards.