Teaching Essentials: Feedback Early and Often
This guide introduces the basics of the assessment cycle, promotes the use of frequent low-stakes assessments, and provides a framework for providing students with actionable feedback.
In addition to the tips and strategies in the tabs below, see also "Feedback and Assessment" in The Open Guide to Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Feedback
Have you ever attempted to travel somewhere new without a map or GPS?
How helpful would it be to receive periodic updates telling you, "You're in the wrong
place"?
Will that help you get where you are going?
Feedback is for students what a map or GPS is for travelers. It tells students not just whether they are on the right track or not, but precisely where they are in relationship to where they are going. Effective feedback should tell students three essential things:
- What they do or do not understand;
- Where their performance is good or poor; and
- How they should change what they are doing to move toward improvement (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010).
Feedback, like assessments, come in two forms:
- Formative feedback provides information to students about how they are progressing toward a specific set of criteria. It can be used by students to inform their subsequent learning or performance. This kind of feedback should be offered before a final student product is submitted.
- Summative feedback provides information to students about their level of proficiency on their final product. This is often where we would assign a grade or score.
Although both types of feedback have value, formative feedback truly supports a learning process for students, particularly if it is targeted. Targeted feedback details, in a prioritized fashion, where students do or do not approach the criteria, so they know how to most effectively and efficiently work to improve their performance.
The timeliness of feedback is essential to its effectiveness. Formative feedback is most effective when it is offered:
- Early, when students need it and can use it;
- Frequently, if possible (and even if somewhat minimal, but useful);
- Before any subsequent attempts at similar performance (e.g., before a second draft is due).
How Can I Easily and Efficiently Provide Effective Feedback?
1. Identify common errors in student work.
It may take time with new assignment to recognize which errors student typically make, but this list may be very easy to create for assignments you have offered in the past. Consider creating a table that lists each common mistake, with a column to the left that allows you to mark (X) which items are of most concern. This table can be copied and pasted to students' electronic work (and returned) or printed and attached to hard-copy work. Example:
| The statements in your introductory paragraph do not support the direction of the rest of your paper. Please review the purpose of your paper and work to re-state it clearly in your introduction. | |
| X | Your spelling and/or grammar is impeding the effective communication of your message in this work. Please visit the Center for Academic Achievement for a consultation to learn where your most common errors are, so you can work to correct them. |
| Although you include some citations, they are not as thorough or as updated as they ought to be. I recommend reviewing more research so that your statements are effectively supported. |
2. Prioritize the feedback you provide.
Of the information you can provide each student on his/her performance, what 1-3 pieces of information would make the most impact on improved performance? Students may become overwhelmed by too many corrections; honing in on the changes that need to be made that will make the most (positive) difference can feel do-able by students and saves you some time on giving feedback.
3. Tell students where they are doing things right, too.
Hearing that some of their performance is correct can help students become more receptive to where they need to focus attention toward improvement. Further, like a roadmap, it says to students that they are on the right track here, but not there. Students therefore won't waste time correcting areas of their work that does not need correcting. Further, the next time they address a similar assignment, they will know that they can effectively perform well with those particular elements.
4. Use rubrics - before the assignment begins and for feedback.
Rubrics can explain to students, in detail, the elements you believe are important for their performance to be successful. Consider investing some front-end time in creating a rubric (table) that details Excellent, Competent, Not Yet Competent, and Poor characteristics of the work to be assessed. Once created, this rubric can be used both to inform students in advance of how their work will be assessed, as well as attached to each formative submission so each student knows where work should be invested for improvement. The rubric can be printed, circled, and attached to students' hard-copy submissions, or attached electronically to a student's electronic submission (or sent/uploaded separately as an electronic document to each student), with the appropriate "cells" highlighted in some manner (text is red; background is yellow; etc.).
5. Use peer feedback opportunities.
Providing an opportunity for peer feedback can give all of your students some valuable learning time, while also giving you a break. If you have clear criteria or a rubric, you can have students pair up to assess each others' work (using the criteria/rubric as a guide). From this experience, students will have an opportunity to learn how to identify the qualities of good work, and may identify places in their own work that need attention. Using peer feedback may work best if students are first provided with some practice opportunities, such as putting up examples of poor and excellent work, and having students evaluate them and compare notes, under your guidance.
Scholarly articles and books on feedback:
Ambrose, S. (2010). How Learning Works : Seven Research-based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass. Sherrod Library.
Feed-Forward
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Feedback for Revision / Feed-Forward
Students are more likely to access and use feedback if they are provided a chance to put your guidance into action. It could be helpful to offer students feedback that can be used toward corrective revision opportunities, particularly in written workfor the class.To make giving useful feedback more efficient, consider using descriptive rubrics or checklists (of common corrective guidance you tend to give); these can even be created in D2L and linked to dropbox assignments for easy access and completion.
Related Resources:
More tips on how to offer effective and efficient feedback:
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Automated Feedback
We can offer some feedback to students automatically, saving us time while still providing them with valuable communication. Using Intelligent Agents, you can send praise for higher scores received (or just getting an assignment submitted), or for low scores, send an email asking students if they would like to meet with you to discuss their confusion and performance further. Intelligent Agents permit an automated way to include students’ first names in the subject line as well as in the email content; taking advantage of this will makethe email feel more personalized to students –and possibly make them more attentive to reading it -, even though it is automated.
Related Resources:
Intelligent Agents How-To:
Best Practices for Release Conditions
More on ways to use IA for instruction:
IAs Increase Instructor-to-Learner Engagement
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Feedback Content / Quality
The quality of feedback can impact how useful it is to students –and whether they might access it! As you continue toward your goal of offering your students effective feedback, consider the elements that are often associated with the best feedback, such as making it goal-oriented, transparent, user-friendly, actionable (i.e., can be used in future class submissions or revisions), ongoing, and consistent.
Related Resources:
10 Tips for Efficient & Effective Grading
The secret of effective feedback.
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Give Feedback Soon
Students are more likely to use feedback if it is provided relatively soon after their efforts have been submitted, while they can still remember the assignment and associated content. Consider planning your assessment of student work so that they can receive feedback as quickly as possible (e.g., withing 1-2 weeks of submission). Using rubrics (which can be highlighted), checklists, or a list from which you can copy/paste common remarks can help make this process less time-consuming for you.
Related Resources:
Grading Fairly
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Weight Fs Fairly
As a standard grading system, we rarely think about it, but when we grade from 0-100 with 59 and below as an F, we are disproportionately weighting Fs as worth ~60% of a grading scale, whereas A-B is weighted at 20% (80% and above). Consider making the floor of your grading scale 50/100, rather than 0. This keeps Fs (and even non-submitted work, often entered as 0) from being disproportionately represented in students’ cumulative grades. Another alternative is to switch to a “GPA”-style grading system (A=4, B=3, C=s, D=1, F=0), which also permits the proportionate weighting of Fs.
Related Resources:
The Case Against Percentage Grades (Gusky, 2013)
Taking the Stress Out of Grading (Feldman, 2020)
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Grade Learning, Not Behaviors
We often include behaviors as part of a student’s grade, although a grade is intended to reflect their knowledge or learning from the class (not their behaviors, unless that is part of the skill set being learned). Consider finding alternative ways to incentivize behaviors, such as attendance or on-time assignment submissions, without them contributing to the student’s overall grade in the course. Alternatives might include limiting access to future assessments until certain learning benchmarks (from earlier assignments) are achieved, or offering powerful learning activities during class that better prepare students for their summative assessments.
Related Resources:
Reporting Student Learning (O’Connor & Wormeli, 2011)
Taking the Stress Our of Grading (Feldman, 2020)
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Weight Mastery Performance in Grade
Including grades on learning activities (such as homework) can be an equity concern, as some students can enter class with better background experiences which lets them quickly master the material, even during the learning phase, whereas others may make many errors before they master the content you are teaching. Consider putting the most grade emphasis on students’ ultimate mastery of the material, typically as evidenced in summative assessments. To ensure these are accurate representations of student learning (i.e., to avoid cheating or stresseffects), consider ways students might retake or revise their summative assessment performance.
Related Resources:
Reporting Student Learning (O'Connor & Wormeli, 2011)
Do Your Grading Practices Undermine Equity Initiatives? (Feldman, 2017)
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Grade Individuals, Not Groups
Giving group grades to individuals is common, but often misrepresents the degree of knowledge or understanding each individual group member has of the content they have learned in the group activity. A recommended practice is to either follow up the group activity with an individual assessment (which is the portion recorded), or to weight the group score with individual assessments of some kind.
Related Resources:
Reporting Student Learning (O'Connor & Wormeli, 2011)
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Give Rubrics or Standards
When students aren’t clear how their work will be graded, (in) equity can play a role: Students who have the skills or academic background to better anticipatewhat is expected are more likely to do well than those who have fewer academic connections. Providing clear guidance and expectations for what to do on each assignment is a way to even this playing field; this can be done by creating rubrics or specifications for each assignment that are made available to students with the assignment descriptions. As a bonus, these become an easy way to give students feedback, as you can complete the rubrics and deliver back to students with their scores.
Related Resources:
Empowering Students by Demystifying Grading (Feldman & Marshall, 2020)
Summative Assessments
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Practice with Summative Assessment Modalities
It is important when we structure summative assessments that they measure the things we are teaching. You are encouraged to think about whether your learning activities support both the content to be measured in your summative assessments, as well as the method in which they are measured. For example, if students are to answer multiple-choice questions in your summative assessments, are they given practice with these types of questions as they learn the content?
Related Resources:
More on the purpose and approach to summative assessments:
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Allow Re-Takes
When summative assessments are high-stakes, students can become very anxious or might even lean toward cheating. However, summative assessments are the best way to measure if students have ultimately grasped the material they should learn in our classes. Consider ways you can make your summative assessments less high-stakes without diminishing their importance or purpose, such as allowing for re-learning and re-taking exams, or revising important papers/assignments. If you are concerned about students “gaming” this approach, you might require them to include a reflection about what they misunderstood and have learned as part of the revision/retake. (Alternatively, you could have them complete a fresh learning activity to gain access to a revision or retake.)
Related Resources:
Examples of reflection methods as part of re-takes and revisions:
Sample Student Reflection Documents
(Note: These examples are from K-12 educators but can be adapted and be applicable to college instruction.)More about the philosophy of this approach, plus some practical tips:
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Group Tests
Although summative assessments are a time to assess what students have learned, they can still be used as a learning opportunity. One method to help students continue to learn is by using group tests or exams: Students take the exam once independently. Then, in class and in small groups, they go through the exam again and either submit a group response exam (which requires collective agreement) or complete the exam again individually (but as the group discusses items; this permits disagreement). If students score higher on the group exam than their original performance, their overall exam grade is raised –typically by a percentage value. A bonus: When students know group testing is coming, they are less likely to cheat the first time.
Related Resources:
What Your Students to Learn More? Test Them in Groups
Collaborative Learning Through Group Testing
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Avoid Cheating / Emphasize Mastery Over Performance
Summative assessments that emphasize mastery (i.e., the learning) over performance (i.e., the grade) are less likely to evoke cheating. Consider including summative assessments in project form that permit open-ended analysis or application, particularly of real-world problems, as one way to emphasize mastery. (Using the Turnitin feature in D2L can assist with avoidance of copying from other sources). To further assist with mastery, permit early drafts for feedback or revisions of sub-par submissions. Revision opportunities can have set limits or restrictions, such as completing a reflection or revision plan.
Related Resources:
Ways to Reduce Cheating and Improve Students Learning
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Prepare Students More
The more students feel prepared for a summative assessment, the less anxiety they should feel in completing it. Consider adding in more learning activities that lead to deeply and actively learning the content or skills that will be assessed on your course’s summative assessments.Providing feedback will further emphasize the importance of their mastery of the material.
Related Resources:
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Write Good Exam Questions
Exam questions are most effective when they measure students’ learning, perhaps along a continuum of understanding. Consider reviewing your exam questions (and students’ performance on them) to ensure they are valid and address a range of understanding based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. If your questions get wide variability in responses or address only the lower levels of Bloom’s (particularly Knowledge and Comprehension), consider reframing the questions or changing some to address higher levels of Bloom’s, when possible.
Related Resources:
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Conduct Pre- and Post- Assessments
Comparing students’knowledge before and after a learning segment can provide useful information to us about the efficacy of our instructional practices. Consider including a pretest of content knowledge that will be addressed during a learning segment, activity, or project, and then assessing again after the segment is complete. (Added benefit: Noting to students their gains in learning can also be impactful to their levels of motivation.)
Formative Assessments
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Diversify Formative Assessments
Formative assessments are used to help students learn new material, as well as to inform them –and you (the instructor) -about their learning progress and any misunderstandings they may have. In order to robustly meet these purposes, it can be helpful to diversify the types of formative assessments you include in your course. [Consultant may wish to elaborate on current types of FAs noted in course here.] You may wish to consider [further] diversifying your formative assessments in the class; please see the resource links for some suggestions.
Related Resources:
For general information and review about formative assessments:
Using Formative Assessment and Metacognition to Improve Student Achievement
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Give Feedback on Formative Assessments
Formative assessments are an opportunity for students to take risks and make mistakes as they learn. As such, it is important that they receive corrective feedback if they misunderstand any content or have not yet mastered a key skill. Consider ways that you can quickly but efficiently provide feedback to students (collectively or individually) so they can learn from the assessment (no matter how informal it might have been).
Related Resources:
Feldman, J. (2018). Grading for equity: What it is, why it matters, and how it can transform schools and classrooms.Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
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Align with Objectives
Sometimes formative assessments can be quick and informal, as a method of checking student understanding. Other formative assessments are learning activities put in place to help students process new material; these are often more carefully planned class activities. For these latter formative assessments, it is important to be sure they align with your course objectives as well as with your summative assessments’ content and methods (summative assessments should assess course objectives). In this way, your planned formative assessments will help your students to learn while also preparingthem for their summative assessments.
Related Resources:
Why Should Assessments, Learning Objectives, and Instructional Strategies Be Aligned?
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Review Performance
One overarching purpose of formative assessments is to provide you, the instructor, with information about what students understand versus what might still remain unclear. You are encouraged to plan times, shortly after offering formative assessments, when you can review students’ performance for patterns of misunderstanding.Then consider: How can you address this misunderstanding now (this semester), and how might you preempt it in future semesters? If you teach on-ground and class time does not permit revisiting some of the content or skills, consider recording a video or designing a brief re-learning activity in D2L.
Related Resources:
Although written for K-12 teachers, this article provides a review of the most useful formative assessments for adapting instruction:
8 Common Sources of Formative Assessment Data
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Quick Formative Assessments
Formative assessments can be quick and still useful for assessing student understanding. Consider implementing more Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs), such as background knowledge probes, minute papers, and asking students to identify the “muddiest point.”
Related Resources:
Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, 2nd edition, by Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross (Jossey-Bass, 1993)
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Tech for Formative Assessments
With some advance preparation, you can get a relatively quick sense of how well students understand the material you are teaching. Some tech tools that can assist with quick quizzes or brief surveys include Microsoft or Google surveys/forms, D2L surveys, Poll Everywhere polls, and Kahoot! (Kahoot! also introduces a game-like feel to the class Q & A process.)