Feedback Stategies

The section on feedback strategies is from the University of Nevada, Reno. These points describe the importance of feedback and provide strategies to help you.

Grades are an essential indicator of how your students are doing in your class. In addition to grades, the quality and timeliness of feedback impact student learning, motivation, and success. Here are a few tips for giving effective feedback.

Characteristics of good feedback

Consider the following characteristics of good feedback provided by Dr. Gavan Watson, Vice President of Teaching and Learning at Memorial University of Newfoundland:

1. Specific: Good feedback is specific and focused on a few items that the student can change the next time to make the most impact. General comments should be avoided. Provide feedback with tools for improvement. While evaluating student work, ask questions such as “What worked well?” and “What needs improvement” to guide your feedback.
2. Actionable: Offer concrete suggestions and emphasize what could be done differently the next time, rather than what the student did “wrong” the first time.
3. Timely: The most effective feedback is immediate and frequent, explicitly tied to the evaluated work, and provided in time for students to incorporate it for the next assessment..
4. Respectful: Effective feedback will look for the good while still focusing on future solutions. Communicate at least one thing the student did well, and use “I” statements, such as “I did not understand the relationship between X and Y” rather than “You did not demonstrate the relationship between X and Y.”

General tips for effective feedback

Liebold & Schwarz (2015) provide the following tips on giving effective feedback that can help to inform your approach to grading and giving feedback on assignments.

• Provide regular and frequent feedback: It can be helpful to set up a pattern for providing feedback to learners. For example, every week by Wednesday for the previous week and with-in 72 hours after an assignment deadline.
• Provide balanced feedback: Be sure to note what the student is doing well as well as areas for improvement. For example, “Kai, great job with including APA source citation. For APA format, place a comma after the author name and before the year. The APA for the corresponding reference on the reference page is correct! Good work!”
• Maintain a positive tone: Two-thirds of the feedback should be positive and point out what is correct. Create a feedback tone that inspires the learner to use the comments to improve future work.
• Ask questions to promote thinking: For example, “Great job with the definition of the concept. What are some examples of the concept you could describe in the paper after the definition to help clarify the meaning?”