Effective Student Feedback Strategies: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction

In the realm of education, feedback is a cornerstone of student growth and development. It serves as a vital link between teaching and learning, providing students with insights into their performance and guiding them toward improvement. Effective student feedback strategies are essential for creating a supportive and productive learning environment. This article explores various aspects of student feedback, from its fundamental definition to practical implementation techniques, aiming to equip educators with the knowledge and tools necessary to maximize its impact.

What is Feedback?

Feedback is any response, whether verbal, written, or gestural, regarding a student’s performance or behavior. It's how a student learns what is accurate and inaccurate about their work. It’s a process intended to improve a student’s performance, not put a damper on it, and should be a positive experience for the student. In other words, it’s how a student learns what is accurate and inaccurate about their work.

The Importance of Feedback

Feedback is a powerful tool that can significantly impact student learning. Well-balanced feedback, addressing both achievements and areas for improvement, can help students develop new skills, reinforce their learning, and boost their academic confidence. It's something that learners want to know. Conversely, ineffective feedback can compound students’ low motivation and self-perception, hindering their development and learning. By focusing on providing quality, effective feedback, educators can maximize its positive effects on learning-not only helping students become better writers, but better thinkers, with increased confidence and motivation to succeed.

Types of Feedback

Feedback can be broadly categorized into two main types: formative and summative.

Formative Feedback

Formative feedback is designed to guide students throughout the learning journey. It's collected during the term and offers real-time insight into their experience of the course and teaching. It is a low- or no-stakes feedback opportunity deployed during the quarter. This type of feedback is granular and helps students pivot, prevent missteps, and build confidence. Integrating opportunities for formative feedback, in addition to summative, enables instructors to address issues when they matter most to students-during their course experience.

Read also: Communication Skills

Summative Feedback

Summative feedback, on the other hand, is typically deployed at the end of a course or unit. Summative feedback reflects a near-finished learning journey. It is benchmarked against learning objectives and usually looks back, as well as provides steps for moving forward and continuing to improve. While it provides insights into how instructors can improve their future teaching and benefit future students, it does not directly benefit the students who provided the feedback.

Key Elements of Effective Feedback

Whether formative or summative, effective feedback should be specific, actionable, focused on patterns, and balanced.

Specificity

Simply underlining, using exclamation marks, or writing "awkward" doesn’t tell students anything about how to revise their work. Feedback should be specific, focusing on particular aspects of a student’s performance and providing concrete examples.

Actionability

If students don’t understand the comments, they can’t use them. Feedback should be focused on action, providing students with clear steps they can take to improve their work.

Focus on Patterns

There are likely to be several mistakes repeated within and across students’ writing. Instructors can keep a comment bank of feedback addressing common mechanical mistakes. Rather than re-writing the same comment on every paper, they can note the first instance with an explanatory comment that applies across students. Over time, instructors might also develop a repository of recurring comments on more structural or content-based patterns, such as thesis development, structure and organization, or use of quotes and evidence. Having stock language on hand that can then tailor to a student’s particular essay can help save time.

Read also: UCLA's Tongva Steps

Balance

The most effective feedback contains a balance of challenge and support. This doesn’t mean, however, that instructors should feel compelled to use the “feedback sandwich”: placing critical feedback between moments of praise.

Creating a Supportive Classroom Culture

Teachers can build a strong foundation for effective feedback by nurturing a classroom culture where it’s safe to take risks, and mistakes are seen as part of learning-a growth mindset. From the beginning of the school year, instructors can begin by explicitly defining the success criteria for academic, social and emotional, and collaborative skills, including the progression of how a day’s learning connects to the end-of-unit goal. Being clear about success criteria empowers students and motivates them so they are more likely to persist.

Instructors can also intentionally build classroom community, modeling kind partnership interactions. They can also model a process or strategy and sometimes make mistakes to show how they reflect and act on them to improve.

Practical Feedback Strategies

There are numerous strategies that educators can employ to provide effective feedback to students. Some of these include:

"Here’s What, So What, Now What"

When providing feedback to students, teachers can pay close attention to the impact on the student-how are they reacting? Everyone handles feedback differently, and instructors want to ensure that they understand the assessment why and what. This bridges into where instructors share why this is important, or "So What." "Did you notice how your question led to all of us in the group looking at the text and searching for evidence? Every student added to the conversation as a result of this.” (When possible, instructors ask the student what they noticed: “Why do you think this was important in our conversation?” This empowers them to reflect and see their impact.)

"Now What" is where the next steps are determined; instructors keep this simple with one or two steps that are most important along the learning trajectory. “When you look at our success criteria, the third part is to add on to what others say. When might you have done that today?”

If the student is able to come up with an idea, the instructor jots down their language (or has them write it) on a sticky note as a reminder of the goal for the next conversation. If they need assistance, the instructor offers a stem: I agree with you and would add _. “How might you remember to do this tomorrow? Let’s check in after our small group tomorrow to celebrate success!” This allows both the instructor and student to feel accountable to the goal and to reflect on growth.

TAG! You’re It!

A second strategy is TAG! You’re It!, also from Standards-Based Learning in Action, for teaching students peer-to-peer feedback. This is similar to Here’s What, So What, Now What, with the benefit of having an acronym to help us remember the steps (T for Tell what you like, A for Ask a question about the work, G for Give a suggestion, then You’re It to decide what to do next). A student might Tell their partner what they liked: “I like how your opinion in the opening paragraph includes three clear reasons.” Then they could Ask one of the following questions: “Why did you choose this topic?” “What did you work the hardest on when writing this?” Open-ended questions are best to encourage deep conversation and reflection.

Give a suggestion is the most sophisticated part of this process and needs more modeling and support. Instructors teach students to consider the impact of their suggestion by choosing their words correctly. For example, instead of “You should,” a student could use “You might” to offer a next step. A student might say, “I really am intrigued by the second reason for your opinion-might you add a few more details to that in your next draft?”

The final step, You’re it, is one that is often missing from peer partnerships; instructors recommend starting a writing lesson with peer feedback so that students have time to act on this step. You’re it is where the students discuss what comes next: Instructors ask, “What will you do today to meet our success criteria? Let’s talk about how that might look.” By discussing what it might look like, students can act as thought partners and generate ideas to work on right away.

Minute Papers

Minute papers are a quick and easy way to gather feedback on student learning. Instructors can pose a question at the end of class and ask students to write a brief response.

Directed Paraphrasing

Directed paraphrasing involves asking students to summarize a concept or idea in their own words. This can help instructors gauge student understanding and identify areas where students may be struggling.

Student-Generated Test Questions

Asking students to generate test questions can be a valuable way to assess their understanding of the material and identify any gaps in their knowledge.

Choosing Feedback Tools

There are various tools and processes available for gathering formative feedback from students. Some of these include:

Top Hat

Top Hat can be used to collect formative feedback during, at the end, or outside of class sessions. This tool is easy to integrate into the course-students can use the join code to respond to Top Hat questions presented during class on their phones or tablets, or activities can be embedded in the Carmen course.

When creating a new “Question” in Top Hat, instructors can select from a menu of various question types. These include Multiple Choice, Fill in the Blank, Long Answer, Matching, Sorting, and more. They are also able to set whether or not the responses are anonymous.

Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms is a tool in the Microsoft 365 suite of desktop and mobile apps that is available to all faculty, staff, and students. Instructors can create forms to solicit real-time feedback from students, with the freedom to select a theme, vary question types, and view and share the feedback in visually appealing ways.

Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID)

The Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID) is a midterm feedback tool that can help any instructor reflect upon and develop their teaching. In contrast to the tools above, which instructors can use to create and customize their own evaluations, the SGID is an established method administered by an external facilitator. SGIDs are essentially student focus groups conducted during class time, but with the instructor absent. This enables the collection of written and verbal student feedback that is anonymous, detailed, and actionable so that the consultant can support instructors in making meaningful changes to their course.

Addressing Student Concerns

Regardless of what kind of feedback is gathered, it is important that students understand that instructors take their feedback seriously. If the course meets in-person or synchronously online, instructors can consider designating class time to talk with the students about their feedback.

Thank students for participating, emphasize the positive, and avoid addressing every concern students raise. Identify at least one thing that can be changed in response to their suggestions and explain what changes will not be made and why. Students might perceive that something is hindering their learning when, in fact, it might be an essential part of the learning process. Remember, some degree of cognitive discomfort or uncertainty is actually necessary for learning. Students might also suggest something that is beyond the instructor's control.

Soliciting Feedback from Students

Soliciting feedback from students may benefit them in other ways as well. When learners are invited to share their input early and often, and feel that their concerns are important, their motivation and satisfaction in the course may improve. Prompting them to provide feedback on the course also spurs them to self-assess and reflect on their own learning, promoting metacognition.

Timing of Feedback Collection

The timing of feedback collection during the term can significantly affect the quality of input received. Students need to have had sufficient experience in the class to offer constructive feedback on course materials and teaching. And instructors need to have sufficient time left to incorporate changes into the course in response to that feedback. Consider collecting feedback from students:

After the first week: Soliciting feedback early encourages students to reflect on their initial impressions of the course and teaching, enabling instructors to address concerns, clear up misunderstandings, or redirect an approach before too much time has passed. This also sets the tone for a collaborative learning environment between students and the instructor, helping students feel ownership in the ongoing success of the course.
After the first exam or major assignment: Collecting feedback after a major assessment allows students to reflect on their learning experience up to that point. It also allows instructors to adjust course content or teaching methods based on student performance on that assessment.
At the midterm point: By the middle of the term, students have had ample time to experience course material and teaching style. They have also had opportunities to reflect upon and assess their own learning. Soliciting feedback at midterm enables instructors to gather robust and meaningful feedback while they still have some time to make helpful changes to the course to support student learning.
At the end of the term: As noted above, the drawback of summative feedback is that it cannot be integrated into the current course, so it’s ideal to collect feedback at one or more of the above suggested times as well. That said, end-of-term feedback can provide a comprehensive overview of how students experienced the entire course. It allows them to reflect on their learning experience and provide constructive criticism that can be used to improve future offerings of the course.

Articulating Goals and Expectations

Having clear goals for collecting feedback-and communicating them to students-will help establish realistic expectations, set a positive tone, and foster a culture geared toward continual improvement. Before developing surveys or any other kind of evaluation, consider the purpose and process for collecting feedback. Before administering them, explain that purpose and process to the students.

Think about the reasons for gathering student feedback. What do you want to learn? Articulate clear aims that you can communicate to students. When students have a solid understanding of the purpose of the feedback collected, they will be more likely to provide thoughtful, constructive, and specific responses that can be used to improve the course.

Share why you value students’ feedback, emphasizing that you can use their ideas to improve the course and adapt teaching. Showing students that you are genuinely interested in their experience-and that you will take steps to address their suggestions and concerns-builds trust and fosters a more positive and collaborative learning environment.

Be open about the process with students, including how feedback will be collected, reviewed and analyzed, and used to improve the course. Let students know that formative feedback results will be shared as soon as possible after review and interpretation. Setting these expectations will reduce any confusion or frustration students may feel if they do not see immediate changes to the course to address their concerns.

Acknowledge the role of feedback in ongoing improvement-not just for student learning, but for teaching as well. Highlight that feedback is not a one-time occurrence, but ideally a continuous loop that supports iterative growth throughout the course.

tags: #effective #student #feedback #strategies