How to work with effective feedback
Feedback is one of the activities that has the greatest impact on learning. Effective feedback should develop students' ability to assess themselves, and it should provide students with a clear picture of their current situation and guidance on how to learn more.
Feedback is one of the activities that has the greatest impact on learning. Effective feedback should develop students' ability to assess themselves, and it should provide students with a clear picture of their current situation and guidance on how to learn more.
Two key terms in the field of feedback are summative and formative assessment. Summative assessment sets performance against objectives and criteria and assesses the extent to which and the level at which students have demonstrated achievement of the objectives. Formative assessment is based on summative assessment and clarifies what can or should be developed in order for the student to get a higher grade or achieve the objectives.
If you want to get good at giving feedback, you need to be clear about how your students need to develop and what they need to do to meet the criteria and achieve the objectives. You also need to share these ideas with your students so that they can assess themselves and each other.
Effective feedback is primarily about how you can help students learn effectively. You can be the one giving the feedback, but you can also have students do a self-assessment or a peer assessment. As feedback is a contextual and social activity, it is impossible to use a set of generalised methods that always work.
Self-assessment, peer assessment and matrix assessment
Effective feedback has positive effects on both your own and your students' development because you learn together. Allowing students to work on self-assessment and peer assessment can free up time for you to give them high-quality feedback. Feel free to use a matrix when giving feedback. It can make it clearer to students what they already know and what they need to develop going forward.
Keep in mind that the feedback
- must give a clear picture of the current situation,
- must enable further learning, and
- must develop the students' ability to assess themselves.
If the feedback is to motivate continued learning, it is important that it is
- useful and
- task-oriented.
Read more about effective feedback
- Jelle Geyskens, Vincent Donces & Peter Van Petegem, "Towards Effective Feedback in Higher Education: Bridging Theory and Practice", Reflecting Education 8:1 (2012).
- David Boud & Elizabeth Molloy: "Rethinking Models of Feedback for Learning: The Challenge of Design", Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 38:6 (2012).