Feedback
Providing Feedback
Why give Feedback?
Feedback plays an important role in Learning and Teaching. Often students don't think they are getting feedback - and it may be just because they see feedback as a set of numbers or grades on their written work. To improve this aspect of good teaching across the Faculty this semester, especially as it will show up in student perceptions (and your USE), name feedback you give explicitly- here comes the feedback!
Key research findings show feedback is important to students in evaluating good teaching:
- criterion-based feedback guides student understanding for improvement
- corrective feedback explains where and why students have made errors and significantly increases in student learning occur
- timely feedback - delay in providing students feedback diminishes its value for learning
- self assessment by students engages them with criteria to monitor their work against established criteria and provide their own feedback (cited from Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Portland, Oregon)
Ways to give feedback - formal and informal:
- Ten minute podcast on what the lecturer expects/what students did well, need to improve
- Discussion boards: post generic feedback on what students missed last year/this year
- Formative feedback for early birds on drafts before the due date
- Assessment feedback sheets on completed assessments
- Feedback in lectures - give students a brief writing task and then provide a slide/overhead with appropriate answers and popular misconceptions; Tom Angelo's The One Minute Paper
- Feedback in consultation time - individually, encourage shy students to come in groups
- Exemplars - find out where and why a student went wrong
Incorporating feedback into your UoS outline
Below are a number of examples of how to effectively include information on feedback in your Unit of Study Outline.
Example 1
Feedback on assessments should be taken seriously to help you learn. In this unit you will receive the following types of feedback.
- Marks will be posted into the Blackboard gradebook when all results for an assessment have been compiled. Marks will not be given over the phone. Exam marks will not be posted in Gradebook. While the marks for the two online quizzes will be available immediately, case studies are marked by tutors within two weeks of submission. The marked reports are distributed in tutorials.
- Errors made in your essay/assignment/case study are identified typically on the paper. A marking sheet will be the main way to communicate feedback on the essay/assignment/case study/presentation. For each assessment task you will get an overall comment as well as an indicator against the level of achievement against each of the assessment criteria. A summary of class-wide errors and appropriate improvement action for each criterion is provided on Blackboard.
- If you would like further feedback on the assessment task, you are encouraged to ask during tutorials or consultation hours. This can be done in pairs or groups if you have similar issues to raise.
Example 2
Feedback on learning.
In addition to the feedback you receive on assessments noted above, you will also receive feedback from a number of sources that can help your learning.
Feedback can come from:
- your peers during discussions or activities in timetabled seminars, tutorials and lectures
- your peers participating in online discussion board activities
- your peers during informal study group meetings, PASS sessions, or group assignment meetings
- your peer mentor and peers in your peer mentoring group
- your computer as you complete optional quizzes and they are automarked and provide in-built feedback. Some of these automarked quizzes are provided online via Blackboard or other coursesites and others via the Excel spreadsheet assignments.
- your peers/computer following completion of the self and peer assessment ratings of the early efforts in the groupwork tasks
- your tutor or lecturer during their office consultation hours or in after-class discussions
- your tutor or lecturer via their comments on online discussion board activities or postings to the coursesite's Virtual Office on Blackboard
- your tutor or lecturer's comments on your in-class contributions relating to the homework or in-class presentations and other assessments.
- yourself as you compare and reflect your thoughts and solutions with feedback.
Don't underestimate the power of self-reflection in learning. When you download the model answers to tutorial problems each week from Blackboard, or view the online discussion about the weekly topic, or listen to others ideas in a tutorial, make sure you really compare where you were different and think about how you might take that feedback on board for the future. This will help you pinpoint errors or weaknesses so you can solve the next problem and build your skills. You can then work on strengthening these areas with your lecturer, tutor or PASS group. Remember, knowledge is gained by constructing and building on previous knowledge, not simply memorising somebody else's answers. Self-reflection is a particularly great tool for turning a negative experience into a positive outcome.
Additional resources on feedback
- The WriteSite marking key can be used to provide students with feedback on their writing skills