giving feedback to students

When providing feedback to students you should consider how the feedback gives the student every opportunity to use it to improve their performance in the future and reinforce their current achievement. Below is a sheet with some helpful tips on giving feedback to students.

Feedback is an integral part of the learning process. It is the feedback we provide to students that enables them to identify areas of strength and weakness so that they may achieve their full potential. Feedback comes in a variety of forms and can be both formal and informal. Below we highlight some examples of the types of feedback available and how they might be used.

As technology has become more accessible so the use of audio feedback has become more of a realistic option for staff. If you use Turnitin, for example, you will note that it now has the option to include audio comments. Audio feedback has been shown to save staff time (Rotherham, 2009) and improve the students’ experience. Audio feedback allows students to hear the tonality of voice and inflections which are missed in the written word.

Video feedback is also emerging as a rich alternative to text only feedback. Video-based feedback can help students feel as if the feedback is very personalised and specific to them. This helps students to consider the feedback to be more meaningful and they are more likely to respond to it. You can create video feedback using a variety of methods including Panopto, or recording using a web cam or mobile phone, and save it to your OneDrive to securely share with your student(s).

The method you choose will depend on the type of work you are returning feedback on, how it was submitted, whether it is individual or group and what technology you have available.

The university supports a number of tools to enable online submission including MyBeckett Assignment, Turnitin and Google docs. All these tools allow you to provide online written feedback. You can find out about providing feedback through Turnitin and MyBeckett on the Digital Learning Service guide pages. If students use tools such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word Online for writing their papers and essays you can provide opportunities for online feedback both by peers and tutors.

By sharing a Google Doc or Microsoft Word Online with their peers and their tutor, a student can draw upon a number of feedback perspectives. Getting students to provide peer feedback in this way can assist them in their own writing. There are also options to provide peer feedback when setting up a Turnitin submission area.

In viva & presentation situations it is important to provide feedback in a way that it is not lost. Most of the time this will involve the tutor writing down the feedback and then sharing it with the student(s). However, you might consider recording both the student presentation/viva and also the tutor feedback via a system like Panopto so that the student can revisit it in their own time.

If you have large cohorts of students it might seem a daunting task providing feedback to each of them. However, you can use a range of feedback tools and techniques to assist you in this process and still provide a rich feedback experience.

The use of rubrics can help you identify to students common areas of strength and weakness and peer feedback that is tutor supported can also be a rich experience for all students involved.

The use of audio feedback has shown to be both rich for students and time saving for staff and can be effectively used in large groups.

Here is the link to the rubric guide for Turnitin.

Clear grading criteria which is clearly linked to learning outcomes can help students to see how they will be assessed. It can also be used as a structure for effective feedback. The use of rubrics can show students how they can meet the grading criteria and what they need to be doing in order to meet each level of grading. By preparing rubrics in advance of the assessment submission they can also be used to provide quick turnaround feedback to students very soon after the assignment submission.

There are examples of grading criteria from 2 areas of the University.

The first is from the area of Health and Social Sciences and is aimed at Masters level students.

The second is from Stephen Newman in the school of Childhood and Education and covers all levels.

REAP Feedback Principles

The REAP [Re-engineering Assessment Practices] project explored ways to give learners a more active role in assessment processes -especially in first year modules with large student cohorts.

The project built on 7 feedback principles to empower learners:

1. Clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, standards)
2. Facilitate the development of reflection and self-assessment in learning
3. Deliver high quality feedback to students: that enables them to self-correct
4. Encourage dialogue around learning (peer and tutor-student)
5. Encourage positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem
6. Provide opportunities to act on feedback
7. Provide information that teachers can use to help shape their teaching

Laura Taylor, from the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts,explains the impact of mandatory, individual feedback sessions.

Kate Grafton from the School of Rehabilitation and Health Sciences, highlights here the positive impact in a professionally accredited Physiotherapy course of swift feedback tailored to different assessment types, consistent feedback expectations across all course modules, giving students choice of how and when they get feedback, feedback that is manageable for tutors with large student cohorts

Stephen Robson from the Carnegie School of Sport describes here some unexpected benefits of mixing traditional and technology enhanced methods of feedback. The case study explores: how annotating scripts can save time, the flexibility of audio feedback, the importance of a clear, explicit strategy that supports mixed feedback methods.

Marc Fabri from the School of Computing Creative Technologies and Engineering describes here how the BSc in Multimedia Technologies relates feedback to professional practice.

He explores: feedback from tutors, peers and industry professionals, immediate feedback, feedback in a work-related context.

Ian Truelove from the School of Art, Architecture and Design, explains actions taken by the course teams in Fine Art and Graphic Arts and Design to: be explicit in feedback terminology, share ownership and responsibility for the feedback process with students, keep formative and summative feedback records in the same feedback journal, use an eportfolio to create a transcribed record of verbal feedback, encourage the use of mobile devices to update feedback journals.

Edwin Knighton from the School of Landscape Architecture, describes the range of techniques used by the course team to encourage student engagement with feedback.

These include: informal input in a studio setting from a range of people, a 'buddy' system to help create a record of feedback, revising terminology to make the feedback process explicit.

Mark Laurillard from the School of the Built Environment and Engineering describes here how the course team for the BSc Project Management stress to students the engaging, collaborative, continuous dialogues in which they may get feedback. These include group discussions in lectures and other forums, one to one discussions over coffee / by email, comments on formative/draft or summative work