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Deliver high quality feedback

 

Deliver high quality feedback

  • What kind of feedback do you provide?
  • How does it encourage students to assess and correct themselves?

It is important that students have the opportunity to learn from the feedback provided by staff.  That learning however, may be enhanced by high quality feedback.  Students are less likely to act on poor quality feedback.  Students’ issues with feedback include the time it takes to receive feedback after submitting the work, understanding the feedback that has been given – this could be the language used, the handwriting, not understanding the abbreviated shorthand, or the grade.  Summary sheet comments should be explicit enough for the student to act on them intelligently.  For example, does a student know what ‘your spelling needs some attention’ or ‘much of this work was irrelevant’ mean?  Feedback should also be about feed forward - what the student can do next time to improve performance.

 Adapted from REAP and the Viewpoints Project e-AFFECT and JISC Logos

 Glover and Brown (2006) categorised depth of feedback into three classes (these can be applied to both strengths and weaknesses):

Category 1 where an issue has been identified (eg a spelling error, an omission mark or a squiggle in the margin), but no advice on how to correct the error (eg the correct spelling)

Category 2: Correct response is provided.  This could also include direction to sources for further help.

Category 3: Providing a reason as to why the issue is a problem as well as giving the correct or appropriate response.

If students only get a summary sheet are the comments explicit enough for the student to act on them intelligently – eg does a student know what ‘your spelling needs some attention’ or ‘much of this work was irrelevant’ mean?  Feedback should also be about feedforward - what can the student do next time to improve their performance (Hounsell 2008)?

Some ways to do this... Technologies to consider...
Ensure feedback is related to the assessment criteria Online Testing/ Written Feedback Tools
Provide feedback in advance of the assignment – FAQs, common errors Screen Recording Tools/ Sound Recording
Provide tutorial activities with feedback Collaboration Tools
Feedback built into online tests Online Testing/ Collaboration Tools
Generic feedback to whole group: following an assignment or as part of in-class activities Screen Recording Tools/ Sound Recording
Feedback 24-48 hours after hand in - skim, say 10% of work handed in, identify common strengths and weaknesses and feed these back to the class either in the next lecture or posting on to QOL Online Submissions/ Screen Recording Tools/ Sound Recording
Select model answers as a feedback source and give feedback to the whole group via discussion board Screen Recording Tools/ Collaboration Tools/ Written Feedback Tools
Ask students to indicate the areas where they would like feedback Written Feedback Tools
Ask students to self-assess their work and provide feedback on this as well as the assessment Written Feedback Tools/ Multimedia Authoring Tools/ Online Testing/ Portfolio Tools/ Peer to Peer Tools

Some Queen’s examples