THE FORMULATION OF WRITTEN FEEDBACK COMMENTS

There is no such thing as good teaching without good feedback. The teacher as knowledgeable expert gives feedback to students with the intention of scaffolding their learning. Scaffolding means helping students reach higher levels of learning and achievement but without doing the work for them. Students value feedback comments that teachers write on their assignments, especially when these comments help explain gaps in understandng, are supportive in tone and suggest ways of improving future work.

To get the best out of feedback comments, however, the student must engage with them. No matter how much feedback the teacher delivers, students won't benefit unless they pay attention to it, process it and act on it. Just as students don't learn to play tennis just by listening to the coach, so they cannot learn to produce a better essay or to solve complex problems just by reading teacher feedback. Effective feedback requires actions by students as well as by the teacher. Indeed, while the quality of teacher comments is important, engagement withj and use of these comments is more important.

In higher education it is usual to think of the teacher as the initiator and the only provider of feedback. However this is not the whole story.  Students frequently give each other feedback when they are tackling the same assignment (peer feedback).  More importantly they are always generating their own feedback while writing an essay or a report; for example, they might consult a textbook to evaluate the accuracy of their argument or to identify gaps in their theoretical explanation. Significant learning benefits can be achieved when teachers build on these internal feedback processes. This usually involves giving students some reference information against which they can compare their own work.  For example, a student might produce an assignment and then be asked to compare what they produced against either some examples of good work, a rubric or even the work of peers. In making this comparison students will generate their own internal feedback as they notice weaknesses in their own work. This self-generated feedback is different from, and often more powerful than, teacher feedback, which also must be compared by the students with their own work if it is to have any impact.

Research on feedback comments

Written feedback should be:

  • Understandable. Expressed in a language that students will understand
  • Selective: Commenting on two or three aspects of the work that are important and that students can do something about (rather than on everything)
  • Specific: Idenifying exactly where in the student's submiitted work that the feedback applies
  • Timely: Provided in time to make a difference
  • Contexutalised: Framed with reference to the assignment goals, the learning outcomes and/or assessment criteria
  • Non-judgemental: Descriptive rather than judgemental, focused on learning goals not just performance goals. 
  • Balanced: Pointing out the positive features in the work (but not praise for praise's sake) as well as areas in need of improvement.
  • Forward looking: Suggesting how students might improve subsequent assignments
  • Transferable: Focused on processes, skills and self-regulatory abilities rather than only content.

[Nicol, 2011. Good desings for written feedback to students. In M. Svinicki and W. J. McKeachie, McKeachie's Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research and Theory for College and University Teachers, Houghton MIffin, New York] 

See also Hounsell, D. (2014) Commenting constructively: Feedback to make difference