What Makes Good Feedback | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle

NEW: A vision for education and skills at Newcastle University: Education for Life 2030+

Feedback should be a two-way dialogue rather than a simple one-way critique, enabling students to positively engage in - and learn from - the assessment process. Feedback should clearly link to module and programme learning outcomes and encourage students to reflect upon their performance and consider how to improve.

Good feedback:

motivates students to continue to work
provides evidence of what and why they have done well, in addition to where they went wrong

clarifies the expected standards
signposts where and how to improve

The guidance on this page was produced as a result of two 2-week sprints (an agile project management methodology) looking into assessment/assignment feedback at Newcastle University.

A student and instructor working together in a computer lab

Principles for effective feedback

Jisc published a new set of Principles of good assessment and feedback (March 2022). These fall into seven areas:

Principle one - help learners understand what good looks like
Principle two - support the personalised needs of learners
Principle three - foster active learning
Principle four - develop autonomous learners
Principle five - manage staff and learner workload effectively
Principle six - foster a motivated learning community
Principle seven - promote learner employability

We have picked out the areas relating specifically to feedback from this document, and drawn on the NEPS module on Giving Effective Feedback as well as the discovery work from both sprints, and distilled our findings into 4 overarching areas:

1. Learner Differences and Personalisation

The student population is diverse, and as such disability, neurodiversity, caring responsibilities, cultural and religious backgrounds, prior experience and learning preferences will affect individual learning experiences and ways in which students:

Perceive feedback
Access feedback
Value feedback
Use feedback

It is therefore helpful to consider these diverse backgrounds to guide ways in which you can consider inclusive approaches to provide meaningful and inclusive feedback for students.

Anonymous marking practice means it is not possible to identify the individual needs of students, and particularly those of disabled students who may experience specific challenges when accessing feedback. Some specific information and resources can give a broad understanding of the barriers and challenges disabled students can experience but we acknowledge that this has its limitations. What may be more valuable is how we can consider co-creation opportunities that allow students to tell us how they would like to receive feedback.

Information and resources about supporting disabled students are:

Examples of where particular feedback format may be helpful to students:

A student with dyslexia may prefer audio feedback over written as it may take them less time to listen and understand feedback if they experience word decoding issues and have slower reading speeds. But this may also be applicable for students whose time is impacted in other ways e.g. those with caring responsibilities, commuter students or students who may experience fatigue due to long term health or mental health conditions.

A student with an Autism Spectrum Condition will value clear, unambiguous feedback that is clearly stated and placed next to text it relates to.

We cannot control how students perceive feedback, but awareness of challenges with, for example, spelling and grammar that may be directly attributed to a disability, should guide us to providing feedback that is:

Sensitive to the potential reasons for the errors
Constructive, pointing out what has been done well and what needs improving
Raises awareness of sources of support to develop academic and core literacy skills
Fosters student understanding of the purpose of feedback
Fosters students to employ self-reflection and utilise development opportunities

So, whilst there is no single form of feedback that will universally meet the needs of, or be valued by all students, balancing what you know about your student cohort with forms of feedback and tools available to you, will help you to consider and select the most effective forms of feedback for access and engagement.

Here is Sarah Graham talking about feedback (5.5 minutes). This comes from the NEPS module on Giving Effective Feedback.

2. Prepare Students for Feedback

Student dissatisfaction with feedback on assessed work can be demoralizing, especially where time has been dedicated to providing that feedback. Part of what could drive this dissatisfaction may be the expectations that students have about feedback or understanding the value of engaging with feedback they receive. As we know feedback isn’t only a written paragraph or annotated script received 20 days after submission. It is important to shift student expectations towards all forms of feedback.

It is important to prepare students to receive feedback and to communicate:

How they will receive feedback – format, individual or group level, which system and where will they find it within that system.
When they will receive feedback – give a clear date they should expect to receive their feedback and if for any reason it is delayed – communicate this delay and when they will receive it.
Why is it important to engage with feedback – often students don’t engage in end of module feedback if they are moving on to a new module as they don’t see the connections between modules – give an overview on the purpose of the feedback given.

Feedback will be effective once you’ve established a common understanding of what feedback is with your students, and what it is for. Students may struggle to follow the assessment criteria and the academic language so be clear in your expectations. Make sure your students know why they are getting feedback and how their learning can be improved by reflection.
Here are a few ideas for preparing your students for feedback:

Create a student guide for your course
Use annotated examples in class
Give the students their own work or example assignments to mark and annotate against the criteria

Some considerations to ensure feedback benefits the student:

Timing: Feedback during a learning experience can deepen a student's understanding and ensure bad habits are eliminated immediately.
Sensitivity: It is vital that you consider the individual when giving student feedback. The classroom will be diverse in learners and this must be considered when delivering feedback.
Be specific: Target the comments to the learning outcomes, that way students have a clear expectation for themselves. Students can also gain confidence in how to improve and to join in a dialogue with the assessor.
Constructive: Feedback should highlight ways in which the student could improve and what they need to reflect upon. Your relationship with the student will have a great impact on how they receive feedback.
Focused: You should always ensure the comments made on assessment are on the product of work and not the student.
Reflective time: Try to return written papers or tests at the beginning of a seminar or tutorial. This allows students time to reflect, ask any necessary questions and have a discussion.

3. Accessibility

Each feedback technique has its advantages and drawbacks, but what we can think about is how to make the feedback we give to students useable and accessible. Accessibility encompasses:

Format of feedback
Tools
Retrievability: where/when and how students access their feedback

4. Format

The format of feedback can influence how students use and access feedback. Awareness of learner differences can create opportunity for feedback efficiency that may enhance student utility with feedback. Think about each format and the potential value and accessibility students may attribute to it:

General written summary
Specific, in text comments
Audio clip
Video clip
Verbal summary

According to Phil Race (2014) there is no such thing as perfect feedback; each feedback technique has its advantages and its drawbacks. He has suggested that a key factor in selecting the most appropriate form of feedback for yourself and your students is to consider the balance or payoff between feedback efficiency for you and learning payoff for students.

Strategies

Feedback Audit Tool

There is a useful Feedback Audit Tool, originally developed by the Bioscience Subject Centre which has a very helpful set of checklists for evaluating how you approach feedback. The tool comes with full instructions and helps you formulate an action plan for taking changes forward in the short, medium and long term.

Possible activities

Here are suggested activities you could use with your students to improve student clarity and use of feedback.

Modelling

Show your students how to use feedback by modelling and using feedback yourself in seminars or tutorials. Teach students the skills to self and peer assess as this will give students ownership, increase the engagement and help students to answer their own questions. You will also be developing students' own self-regulation skills.

Snowballing assessment criteria

Students are asked to reflect on a task they have just completed.

Students are asked to work alone to write the characteristics of a good piece of work.
They then get together in pairs and combine their criteria.
The pairs get into fours and combine their criteria into an agreed list.
The teacher then asks each group of four in turn for one criterion, and comments on this, writing it up if it is useful. If it is not useful, the teacher asks for improvement of the criterion; it from another group and explores any misconceptions.
Gradually an agreed set of good criteria are developed and explained. Misconceptions can now be corrected (which is a key advantage of this approach) and the real goals explained.

Specimen assignments

The student studies a number of pieces of anonymous student’s work. This can be genuine, or it might have been produced by the teacher specifically for this activity. As well as this work, students are given model answers and mark schemes, and they are asked to assess the work. The teacher asks the students to give their opinions of the work, concludes strengths and weaknesses, and draws attention to different strategies used by the students. Students compare their marking with the teacher's.

Explaining my work

This activity is a little like peer assessment but is more informal. Students have to show their work to a peer or peers and explain their approach. This is common in Art and Design and could be used elsewhere. It helps students to see alternative ‘ways of doing it’.

You can ask students to explain the process that is ‘how they did it’ and ‘why I did it that way’ as well as the product: ‘what I produced’.

Verbal Peer Assessment on presentations

Start with a clear outline of the success criteria. Students listen to presentations from individuals or groups. Ask each individual to write down one ‘strength’ and one area needing improvement. Students then receive large amounts of peer feedback.

Speedy Feedback

Hand out a coloured sheet of paper with numbered feedback responses on it pertinent to the assessment task. For example:

Illustration of what is expected as evidence of achievement of each of the intended learning outcomes
Likely mistakes
Features of a good answer
Frequently needed explanations
Things you otherwise would have to write time and time again on students’ work, e.g. commonly used feedback comments.

Agree a clear deadline for submission of work, giving date and time. Within the class, give out the coloured sheets and give students a few minutes to read it. Pick one or two key points from the coloured sheet and spend a few minutes talking through these points to the whole group, adding a personal touch. When marking the work, make use of this sheet, directing students to, for example, ‘See point 4, Blue sheet’ – this will take much less time than writing points out in full repeatedly to different students.

Multiple choice questions (MCQs)

Well-designed MCQs can have pre-written feedback for each choice, this can form bespoke formative feedback.

Audio feedback

Using audio feedback can engage students and gives students a bespoke rationale behind their grade. Audio recordings can be made, edited and uploaded quickly and easily at your desk through ReCap. Turnitin also allows voice comments.

Online tools

Canvas and Turnitin have tools to support assessment. These are particularly useful for providing immediate feedback, increasing the accessibility of feedback, and are great for feeding back on large cohorts.

You may wish to take a holistic look at how you approach feedback in your modules/programme. There are some practical tools which can help you use the feedback functions in Canvas as well as some tools for looking at feedback in your modules or programme. Taking a little time to explore the functions in these tools may save you time and help support more personalised feedback, which is of the highest value to students.

Assessment Feedback tools in Canvas

There is detailed support available on using assessment feedback tools in Canvas including assignments, online marking and feedback, with detailed instructions for all the options available to you.

If you have not looked at the Canvas Orientation course recently it may be useful to take a fresh look. All colleagues have access – look in your Dashboard once logged in to Canvas. You should have the Canvas Orientation in your Published Courses list. You might like to revisit the section on Online Marking and Feedback which outlines Speedgrader and Gradebook features.

Turnitin Feedback Studio

There are helpful tips and case studies on using Turnitin Feedback Studio within Canvas.

Other places students can get marks/feedback:

NESS
Student Portal

Retrievability: Where/when/how do students access their feedback

Don’t assume students know where to find and retrieve their feedback and marks. It may be useful to discuss in your programme/module teams how you might be more consistent in the information you give to your students on where they can find their marks and feedback, and what your local expectations are for when to expect feedback to appear, and how your students can make the best use of this feedback for their next assessed piece of work.

Considerations

One point that has been reflected consistently in student comments on feedback in that it is not always clear where they should look for their marks and feedback, or indeed how they should find and make the best use of their feedback.

There are several options for how you give feedback to students, which enable diversity of choice to support the diversity of the student cohort, as well as the wide variety of assessment types across disciplines. To help students it will be useful to signpost students to where they can find their feedback, when to expect it and what to do with it once they have it.

Feedback on exams is likely to be different to the feedback on assessed pieces of work. It will be helpful to students to outline these differences and to manage expectations about if and how exams feedback will be dealt with. There is detailed support on dealing with feedback on exams.

Find out more

Professor David Nicol explains how students can be guided to make comparisons and feedback on their own work, rather than relying on instructor comments, for improved learning outcomes in this THE Campus article.

Professor David Boud: Redesigning feedback involves addressing the feedback literacy of students and staff (YouTube 17.5 minutes)

Professor Chris Rust discusses feedback (YouTube 3.5 minutes)

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