What is the deal with effective feedback?

Effective feedback is feedback that can be and is used to improve learning outcomes and performance in the future. This description of effective feedback highlights two crucial components: Feedback provision and feedback use. One common misconception is that the provision of feedback alone leads to its use. While good feedback provision is certainly a step into the right direction (see this guest blog post on SMART Feedback) and may increase the likelihood of feedback use, it is not sufficient to encourage feedback use in the majority of students.

There are two problems that I would like to highlight (1):

(a) Lack of opportunities for immediate feedback use: Usually feedback is provided on the final submission of an assignment. Thus, students cannot use the feedback right away to improve the quality of their assignment – because, well, the assignment is done and dusted; a mark given and nothing you can do to change it. However, providing students with the opportunity to use feedback immediately would not only encourage them to do so, but also improve the quality of their work.

(b) Unclear relevance for future feedback use: It can be difficult for students to see the relevance of feedback provided for assignment A for a future assignment B. On the one hand, this can be due to feedback provision which focusses on too specific points, but, on the other hand, it may be due to the fact that students are not encouraged to use previously provided feedback to inform future assignments.

Thus, could teachers or lecturers create opportunities for immediate and future feedback use when designing their assignments? Yes, by systematically incorporating formative feedback. When designing assignments make sure that (a) students are provided with formative feedback in a first step before they complete the assignment, (b) students revisit previous feedback to accomplish future assignments, and (c) previous feedback use is a requirement for future feedback provision.

Overcoming low feedback use: Two-stage feedback

One idea I recently came up with and that I will be piloting with my students this year is a two-stage feedback approach that is manageable time-wise for teachers and lecturers. Before describing how it works, I need to provide a bit of context.