importance of feedback essay

The Importance of Feedback

• Posted January 21, 2022
• By Emily Boudreau
• Learning Design and Instruction
• Teachers and Teaching
• Technology and Media

Teachers know that it’s often not a question of if students will get stuck when working on a creative project but when . To help reimagine the classroom as a space in which students can look to each other, and not just the teacher, for feedback and inspiration, a team of researchers at the Creative Computing Lab , including Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Karen Brennan , Ph.D. student Paulina Haduong , and alums Mary Adelaide Williamson, Laura Peters, Sara Smolevitz, and Brian Yu, released an intermediate computer programming curriculum, Getting Unstuck . The curriculum was also co-designed and has been tested by teachers

“I believe very profoundly in the power of learning with and from others,” says Brennan. “It’s incredibly exciting to have your work seen by others, to have others respond to it. And in some ways, we don’t necessarily make as much space as we might in the classroom for that.” 

However, as Brennan observes, one of the greatest obstacles to creative work is fear — fear of being wrong, fear of not looking smart in front of others — so receiving feedback from others can feel overwhelming. To help build a community that can learn together and from one another, the design team intentionally included activities that allow students to practice giving, receiving, and making sense of feedback about their projects. These activities can be done in pairs, small groups, or with the whole class. Students can give both verbal and written feedback. A few of those activities include:

• Red, Yellow, Green : Students receive feedback from three peers. Each peer provides something they’d change, something they wondered about, and something they liked. The student must then decide what they will work on next, based on the feedback they received.
• Hearts and Stars : Students share one thing they like about a project. Have them try using the sentence starter “I like the way you… because…” Then, students share one thing the project’s creator could try. Have them start their feedback with “Something you could do next is…”
• Gallery Walk : Students walk around the classroom and show their project to a classmate. The project sharer tells their partner something they like about their own work and a question they have about it. The feedback giver then shares something they like and something they’re wondering about. Students switch roles then move on to find a new partner.

Making Sense of It All

Once students have received feedback, the next challenge is interpreting that feedback and using it to spark the next step in the project. Yet students often receive conflicting feedback about their projects. Some of their peers may really like an element of the work while others might not be as crazy about it. According to Brennan, this is a key moment.

“Part of being a creative agent in the world is making sense of the feedback you get — listening to other people’s opinions, making sense of those, taking what is going to be helpful for you, and put aside that which is not helpful,” she says. “In those moments, kids are making sense of the world and advancing their learning and thinking.”

Key Takeaways

• When doing creative work, students will get stuck. Providing feedback on a draft is one of many ways to help students find a path forward.
• Students may need to practice giving feedback to cultivate a supportive learning community.
• Feedback may often be conflicting. Give students time to reflect and evaluate what their peers share with them about their work. Let them decide what they will keep and what they will put aside.

Additional Resources

• The Scratch Ed Community Archive
• Let’s Not All Make the Same Thing
• Harvard EdCast: Learning from Mistakes
• Happy Students Are Motivated Students

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Getting Feedback

What this handout is about.

Sometimes you’d like feedback from someone else about your writing, but you may not be sure how to get it. This handout describes when, where, how and from whom you might receive effective responses as you develop as a writer.

Why get feedback on your writing?

You’ll become a better writer, and writing will become a less painful process. When might you need feedback? You might be just beginning a paper and want to talk to someone else about your ideas. You might be midway through a draft and find that you are unsure about the direction you’ve decided to take. You might wonder why you received a lower grade than you expected on a paper, or you might not understand the comments that a TA or professor has written in the margins. Essentially, asking for feedback at any stage helps you break out of the isolation of writing. When you ask for feedback, you are no longer working in a void, wondering whether or not you understand the assignment and/or are making yourself understood. By seeking feedback from others, you are taking positive, constructive steps to improve your own writing and develop as a writer.

Why people don’t ask for feedback

• You worry that the feedback will be negative. Many people avoid asking others what they think about a piece of writing because they have a sneaking suspicion that the news will not be good. If you want to improve your writing, however, constructive criticism from others will help. Remember that the criticism you receive is only criticism of the writing and not of the writer.
• You don’t know whom to ask. The person who can offer the most effective feedback on your writing may vary depending on when you need the feedback and what kind of feedback you need. Keep in mind, though, that if you are really concerned about a piece of writing, almost any thoughtful reader (e.g., your roommate, mother, R.A., brother, etc.) can provide useful feedback that will help you improve your writing. Don’t wait for the expert; share your writing often and with a variety of readers.
• You don’t know how to ask. It can be awkward to ask for feedback, even if you know whom you want to ask. Asking someone, “Could you take a look at my paper?” or “Could you tell me if this is OK?” can sometimes elicit wonderfully rich responses. Usually, though, you need to be specific about where you are in the writing process and the kind of feedback that would help. You might say, “I’m really struggling with the organization of this paper. Could you read these paragraphs and see if the ideas seem to be in the right order?”
• You don’t want to take up your teacher’s time. You may be hesitant to go to your professor or TA to talk about your writing because you don’t want to bother them. The office hours that these busy people set aside, though, are reserved for your benefit, because the teachers on this campus want to communicate with students about their ideas and their work. Faculty can be especially generous and helpful with their advice when you drop by their office with specific questions and know the kinds of help you need. If you can’t meet during the instructor’s office hours, try making a special appointment. If you find that you aren’t able to schedule a time to talk with your instructor, remember that there are plenty of other people around you who can offer feedback.
• You’ve gotten feedback in the past that was unhelpful. If earlier experiences haven’t proved satisfactory, try again. Ask a different person, or ask for feedback in a new way. Experiment with asking for feedback at different stages in the writing process: when you are just beginning an assignment, when you have a draft, or when you think you are finished. Figure out when you benefit from feedback the most, the kinds of people you get the best feedback from, the kinds of feedback you need, and the ways to ask for that feedback effectively.
• You’re working remotely and aren’t sure how to solicit help. Help can feel “out of sight, out of mind” when working remotely, so it may take extra effort and research to reach out. Explore what resources are available to you and how you can access them. What type of remote feedback will benefit you most? Video conferencing, email correspondence, phone conversation, written feedback, or something else? Would it help to email your professor or TA ? Are you looking for the back and forth of a real-time conversation, or would it be more helpful to have written feedback to refer to as you work? Can you schedule an appointment with the Writing Center or submit a draft for written feedback ? Could joining or forming an online writing group help provide a source of feedback?

Possible writing moments for feedback

There is no “best time” to get feedback on a piece of writing. In fact, it is often helpful to ask for feedback at several different stages of a writing project. Listed below are some parts of the writing process and some kinds of feedback you might need in each. Keep in mind, though, that every writer is different—you might think about these issues at other stages of the writing process, and that’s fine.

• The beginning/idea stage: Do I understand the assignment? Am I gathering the right kinds of information to answer this question? Are my strategies for approaching this assignment effective ones? How can I discover the best way to develop my early ideas into a feasible draft?
• Outline/thesis: I have an idea about what I want to argue, but I’m not sure if it is an appropriate or complete response to this assignment. Is the way I’m planning to organize my ideas working? Does it look like I’m covering all the bases? Do I have a clear main point? Do I know what I want to say to the reader?
• Rough draft: Does my paper make sense, and is it interesting? Have I proven my thesis statement? Is the evidence I’m using convincing? Is it explained clearly? Have I given the reader enough information? Does the information seem to be in the right order? What can I say in my introduction and conclusion?
• Early polished draft: Are the transitions between my ideas smooth and effective? Do my sentences make sense individually? How’s my writing style?
• Late or final polished draft: Are there any noticeable spelling or grammar errors? Are my margins, footnotes, and formatting okay? Does the paper seem effective? Is there anything I should change at the last minute?
• After the fact: How should I interpret the comments on my paper? Why did I receive the grade I did? What else might I have done to strengthen this paper? What can I learn as a writer about this writing experience? What should I do the next time I have to write a paper?

A note on asking for feedback after a paper has been graded

Many people go to see their TA or professor after they receive a paper back with comments and a grade attached. If you seek feedback after your paper is returned to you, it makes sense to wait 24 hours before scheduling a meeting to talk about it. If you are angry or upset about a grade, the day off gives you time to calm down and put things in perspective. More important, taking a day off allows you to read through the instructor’s comments and think about why you received the grade that you did. You might underline or circle comments that were confusing to you so that you can ask about them later. You will also have an opportunity to reread your own writing and evaluate it more critically yourself. After all, you probably haven’t seen this piece of work since you handed it in a week or more ago, and refreshing your memory about its merits and weaknesses might help you make more sense of the grade and the instructor’s comments.

Also, be prepared to separate the discussion of your grade from the discussion of your development as a writer. It is difficult to have a productive meeting that achieves both of these goals. You may have very good reasons for meeting with an instructor to argue for a better grade, and having that kind of discussion is completely legitimate. Be very clear with your instructor about your goals. Are you meeting to contest the grade your paper received and explain why you think the paper deserved a higher one? Are you meeting because you don’t understand why your paper received the grade it did and would like clarification? Or are you meeting because you want to use this paper and the instructor’s comments to learn more about how to write in this particular discipline and do better on future written work? Being up front about these distinctions can help you and your instructor know what to expect from the conference and avoid any confusion between the issue of grading and the issue of feedback.

Kinds of feedback to ask for

Asking for a specific kind of feedback can be the best way to get advice that you can use. Think about what kinds of topics you want to discuss and what kinds of questions you want to ask:

• Understanding the assignment: Do I understand the task? How long should it be? What kinds of sources should I be using? Do I have to answer all of the questions on the assignment sheet or are they just prompts to get me thinking? Are some parts of the assignment more important than other parts?
• Factual content: Is my understanding of the course material accurate? Where else could I look for more information?
• Interpretation/analysis: Do I have a point? Does my argument make sense? Is it logical and consistent? Is it supported by sufficient evidence?
• Organization: Are my ideas in a useful order? Does the reader need to know anything else up front? Is there another way to consider ordering this information?
• Flow: Do I have good transitions? Does the introduction prepare the reader for what comes later? Do my topic sentences accurately reflect the content of my paragraphs? Can the reader follow me?
• Style: Comments on earlier papers can help you identify writing style issues that you might want to look out for. Is my writing style appealing? Do I use the passive voice too often? Are there too many “to be” verbs?
• Grammar: Just as with style, comments on earlier papers will help you identify grammatical “trouble spots.” Am I using commas correctly? Do I have problems with subject-verb agreement?
• Small errors: Is everything spelled right? Are there any typos?

Possible sources of feedback and what they’re good for

Believe it or not, you can learn to be your own best reader, particularly if you practice reading your work critically. First, think about writing problems that you know you have had in the past. Look over old papers for clues. Then, give yourself some critical distance from your writing by setting it aside for a few hours, overnight, or even for a couple of days. Come back to it with a fresh eye, and you will be better able to offer yourself feedback. Finally, be conscious of what you are reading for. You may find that you have to read your draft several times—perhaps once for content, once for organization and transitions, and once for style and grammar. If you need feedback on a specific issue, such as passive voice, you may need to read through the draft one time alone focusing on that issue. Whatever you do, don’t count yourself out as a source of feedback. Remember that ultimately you care the most and will be held responsible for what appears on the page. It’s your paper.

A classmate (a familiar and knowledgeable reader)

When you need feedback from another person, a classmate can be an excellent source. A classmate knows the course material and can help you make sure you understand the course content. A classmate is probably also familiar with the sources that are available for the class and the specific assignment. Moreover, you and your classmates can get together and talk about the kinds of feedback you both received on earlier work for the class, building your knowledge base about what the instructor is looking for in writing assignments.

Your TA (an expert reader)

Your TA is an expert reader—they are working on an advanced degree, either a Master’s or a Ph.D., in the subject area of your paper. Your TA is also either the primary teacher of the course or a member of the teaching team, so they probably had a hand in selecting the source materials, writing the assignment, and setting up the grading scheme. No one knows what the TA is looking for on the paper better than the TA , and most of the TAs on campus would be happy to talk with you about your paper.

Your professor (a very expert reader)

Your professor is the most expert reader you can find. They have a Ph.D. in the subject area that you are studying, and probably also wrote the assignment, either alone or with help from TAs. Like your TA, your professor can be the best source for information about what the instructor is looking for on the paper and may be your best guide in developing into a strong academic writer.

Your roommate/friend/family member (an interested but not familiar reader)

It can be very helpful to get feedback from someone who doesn’t know anything about your paper topic. These readers, because they are unfamiliar with the subject matter, often ask questions that help you realize what you need to explain further or that push you to think about the topic in new ways. They can also offer helpful general writing advice, letting you know if your paper is clear or your argument seems well organized, for example. Ask them to read your paper and then summarize for you what they think its main points are.

The Writing Center (an interested but not familiar reader with special training)

While the Writing Center staff may not have specialized knowledge about your paper topic, our writing coaches are trained to assist you with your writing needs. We cannot edit or proofread for you, but we can help you identify problems and address them at any stage of the writing process. The Writing Center’s coaches see thousands of students each year and are familiar with all kinds of writing assignments and writing dilemmas.

Other kinds of resources

If you want feedback on a writing assignment and can’t find a real live person to read it for you, there are other places to turn. Check out the Writing Center’s handouts . These resources can give you tips for proofreading your own work, making an argument, using commas and transitions, and more. You can also try the spell/grammar checker on your computer. This shouldn’t be your primary source of feedback, but it may be helpful.

A word about feedback and plagiarism

Asking for help on your writing does not equal plagiarism, but talking with classmates about your work may feel like cheating. Check with your professor or TA about what kinds of help you can get legally. Most will encourage you to discuss your ideas about the reading and lectures with your classmates. In general, if someone offers a particularly helpful insight, it makes sense to cite them in a footnote. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to write by yourself with your books closed. (For more on this topic, see our handout on plagiarism .)

What to do with the feedback you get

• Don’t be intimidated if your professor or TA has written a lot on your paper. Sometimes instructors will provide more feedback on papers that they believe have a lot of potential. They may have written a lot because your ideas are interesting to them and they want to see you develop them to their fullest by improving your writing.
• By the same token, don’t feel that your paper is garbage if the instructor DIDN’T write much on it. Some graders just write more than others do, and sometimes your instructors are too busy to spend a great deal of time writing comments on each individual paper.
• If you receive feedback before the paper is due, think about what you can and can’t do before the deadline. You sometimes have to triage your revisions. By all means, if you think you have major changes to make and you have time to make them, go for it. But if you have two other papers to write and all three are due tomorrow, you may have to decide that your thesis or your organization is the biggest issue and just focus on that. The paper might not be perfect, but you can learn from the experience for the next assignment.
• Read ALL of the feedback that you get. Many people, when receiving a paper back from their TA or professor, will just look at the grade and not read the comments written in the margins or at the end of the paper. Even if you received a satisfactory grade, it makes sense to carefully read all of the feedback you get. Doing so may help you see patterns of error in your writing that you need to address and may help you improve your writing for future papers and for other classes.
• If you don’t understand the feedback you receive, by all means ask the person who offered it. Feedback that you don’t understand is feedback that you cannot benefit from, so ask for clarification when you need it. Remember that the person who gave you the feedback did so because they genuinely wanted to convey information to you that would help you become a better writer. They wouldn’t want you to be confused and will be happy to explain their comments further if you ask.
• Ultimately, the paper you will turn in will be your own. You have the final responsibility for its form and content. Take the responsibility for being the final judge of what should and should not be done with your essay.
• Just because someone says to change something about your paper doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes the person offering feedback can misunderstand your assignment or make a suggestion that doesn’t seem to make sense. Don’t follow those suggestions blindly. Talk about them, think about other options, and decide for yourself whether the advice you received was useful.

Final thoughts

Finally, we would encourage you to think about feedback on your writing as a way to help you develop better writing strategies. This is the philosophy of the Writing Center. Don’t look at individual bits of feedback such as “This paper was badly organized” as evidence that you always organize ideas poorly. Think instead about the long haul. What writing process led you to a disorganized paper? What kinds of papers do you have organization problems with? What kinds of organization problems are they? What kinds of feedback have you received about organization in the past? What can you do to resolve these issues, not just for one paper, but for all of your papers? The Writing Center can help you with this process. Strategy-oriented thinking will help you go from being a writer who writes disorganized papers and then struggles to fix each one to being a writer who no longer writes disorganized papers. In the end, that’s a much more positive and permanent solution.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Response: Ways to Give Effective Feedback on Student Writing

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This is the second post in a four-part series. You can see Part One here .)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What are the best ways to give students feedback on their writing?

Part One began with responses from Anabel Gonzalez, Sarah Woodard, Kim Jaxon, Ralph Fletcher, Mary Beth Nicklaus, and Leah Wilson. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Anabel, Sarah, and Kim on my BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

Today, Susan M. Brookhart, Cheryl Mizerny, Amy Benjamin, Kate Wolfe Maxlow, Karen Sanzo, Andrew Miller, David Campos, and Kathleen Fad share their commentaries.

Response From Susan M. Brookhart

Susan Brookhart, Ph.D., is the author of How to Use Grading to Improve Learning (ASCD 2017) and How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students (2nd edition, ASCD 2017)). She is a professor emeritus at Duquesne University and an author and consultant. Her focus is classroom assessment and its impact on teaching, learning, and motivation:

Giving feedback on writing is a special responsibility. If you ask students to write thoughtfully to you, it would be hypocritical of you not to write (or speak, if your feedback is oral) thoughtfully back to them. And students will notice! Here are five things to keep in mind as you think about feedback on students’ written work:

#1 - Before the students write, make sure they know what they are trying to learn (more specifically than just “writing”) and what qualities their writing should exhibit. Unless students are trying to learn something specific, they will experience teacher feedback as additional teacher directions they have to follow. So, for example, if students are writing descriptive paragraphs, they should know what the kind of descriptive paragraphs they are aiming for looks like. Criteria for success might be that they (1) use adjectives that describe by telling what the object of their description looks, sounds, tastes, smells, or feels like; and (2) help their readers feel like they “are there,” experiencing whatever is described themselves. If this is what students are aiming to do, then the feedback questions are already set up: Are my adjectives descriptive? Do they conjure up sight, sound, taste, smell, or touch? Did you (my teacher and my reader) feel like you really experienced what I was describing, that you were there? The best feedback on student writing tells students what they want to know to get closer to the particular vision of writing they are working on.

#2 - Describe at least one thing the student did well, with reference to the success criteria. Focus your feedback on the criteria, not on other features of the work (like handwriting or grammar, unless that was the focus of the writing lesson). Even the poorest paper has something to commend it. Find that and begin your feedback there. Students can’t navigate toward learning targets by filling in deficits only; they also need to build on their strengths. And don’t assume that just because a student did something well, they know what that is. The best feedback on student writing names and notices where students are meeting criteria that show their learning.

#3 - Suggest the student’s immediate next steps, again with reference to the success criteria. Your feedback does not need to “fix” everything possible. It only needs to take the student’s work to the next level. Select the one or two—whatever is doable in the next draft of the writing piece—things that the student should do next, given where they are right now.The best feedback on student writing moves students forward in their quest to reach a learning goal.

#4 - Make sure you learn something from the feedback episode, too. Too often, teachers think of feedback as their expert advice on students’ writing. But every opportunity to give feedback on student writing is also an opportunity for you to learn something about what your students are thinking, what kinds of writing skills they have, and what they need to learn next. The best feedback on student writing gives teachers a window into student thinking; it doesn’t just advise students.

#5 - Give students an immediate opportunity to use the feedback. Much feedback on student writing is wasted, because students don’t use it. Many teachers subscribe to the myth that students will use the feedback “next time” they write something similar. However, it’s not true that students have some sort of file drawer in their heads, with files labeled according to type of writing, that they will magically open at some point in the future.

No matter how well-intentioned the student, this just isn’t how it works. The best feedback on student writing is followed immediately by a planned opportunity, within instructional time, for students to use the feedback.

Response From Cheryl Mizerny

Cheryl Mizerny has been teaching for more than 20 years, is passionate about middle-level education, and serves on the faculty of the AMLE Leadership Institute. Her practice is guided by her belief in reaching every student and educating the whole child. She currently teaches 6th grade English in Michigan and writes an education blog, “It’s Not Easy Being Tween,” for Middleweb.com:

Good feedback on student writing is time-consuming and takes a great deal of teacher effort, but the results in the improvement of their writing is worth my time. Over the years, I have found some ways to streamline the process.

First, students can’t hit a target they can’t see. Therefore, it is important that they have a clear understanding of the goal of the writing piece. I do lots of front-loading with using mentor texts to study author’s craft. Valuable feedback will tell them how close they are to the target and how they can get closer to a bullseye.

For me, the most important consideration when giving feedback is how likely is this to be used? Whenever possible, my first step is verbal feedback via an individual writing conference during the first draft stage. This lets me correct any major errors before they get too far along. We use Google docs so that they have access to them everywhere, I can see the revision history, and I am able to type my comments right in line with the text (which is faster and neater than my handwriting). Prior to writing my first comments, I have students identify a couple things on which they’d like me to focus when reading their paper. Just as I have goals for the final piece, so should they. Then, I begin the process of reading for feedback.

For me, I’ve found that feedback works best if it meets the following criteria: It’s prompt (not saying it has to be the next day, but students get very upset if they have to wait three weeks to get a draft back and rightly so), conversational and respectful in tone, specifically identifies areas for improvement and prioritizes them, focuses on larger issues such as content over small ones like punctuation, and is strengths-based with a balance of more positive than negative commentary. Feedback such as “Good job” is not helpful nor is “This is way too short.” Students needs specific information about how to make improvements if they are going to do so. If I have an especially weak piece, I don’t provide all the ways it can be improved via written feedback to avoid the child shutting down. That student obviously needs more assistance, and a conference is warranted. I am careful to address only a few areas of improvement per paper and I also comment on the areas in which they have a personal progress goal.

As they begin revising in class, I give some individual time to students to have a conversation about their work. The rest are looking at my comments and addressing each one or reading each other’s work. Prior to them handing in the second draft, I provide a checklist of things to consider and ask students to “whisper-read” to themselves (Google Docs has a screen reader built in) to find simple errors. Once they hand in this draft, I look at their work using a single-point rubric (see Jennifer Gonzalez article ) and make comments on it as a cover sheet. I hand this back without a grade on it. In my experience, once they see a grade, the learning stops. They then have one final pass to make any corrections before I receive the final. We also have a celebration of the writing and share work with one another. In my class, it’s is all about the writing process and not the product and this method works well for us.

Response From Amy Benjamin

Amy Benjamin is a teacher, educational consultant, and author whose most recent book is Big Skills for the Common Core (Routledge). Her website is www.amybenjamin.com :

Recently I asked a group of English and social studies teachers to list the marginal comments that they typically write on their students’ papers. Many of the comments were frowny-faced reprimands ending in exclamation points: “Check spelling! Be specific! Develop! Proofread! Follow directions! Review apostrophe use! Others were milder admonitions, often in the form of questions: Where’s your evidence? This shows what? Is this accurate? Punctuation?” Then there were suggestions that, though valid, are unlikely to do much good: “Be sure to support your claim, support the quote, make an inference, anchor the quote, connect to the question, elaborate meaning of quote, explain detail, review, set up the context for the claim, work on ‘tightening up’ your writing, follow the rubric.” The teacher knows what these comments mean, but do the students? Despite the inordinate amount of time it takes to pore over essays and write these comments, we have reason to suspect that they are not accomplishing their intended purposes, which are twofold: 1) to justify the grade on top of the paper, and 2) to get students to improve their writing. The second is far more important than the first. But if there’s no follow-up to our commentary, then what is the point? What are the best ways to give feedback that actually leads to improvement?

First, let’s consider the tone of our comments: While not all of the comments I collected were negative, most were. Some of the positive ones were “nicely written, well-supported, excellent topic sentence, insightful point, great evidence provided, good intro, good sentence, good use of vocab, love your voice, I love this point.” The best way to keep someone pursuing a challenge is to encourage them. It is not so hard to find something—anything—that merits a pat on the back.

Second, let’s consider the amount of correction that is necessary to foster incremental improvement. Teachers are not copy editors. The copy editor has not done her job unless she has found and fixed every single error . But a teacher’s job should be to point out errors and weaknesses sparingly, staying within what she perceives to be that student’s zone of proximal development. All students are novice writers. Their progress will be recursive. If they take risks to produce increasingly sophisticated language in an academic register, they are likely to make more grammatical mistakes, not fewer. One positive and one negative comment or correction on a student’s paper is probably sufficient to keep the writer on a learning curve.

Think of a child learning to play the saxophone. The child has practiced and plays the rehearsed piece for her weekly lesson. Imagine a music teacher responding like this: “I heard two squeaks, one wrong note, an underplayed dynamic at Letter C, a missed quarter rest on the fourth measure, and you completely ignored the dynamics. Watch your fingering, your breathing, and your posture. Pay attention to the time signature. While you’re at it, give it some feeling. It’s supposed to sound like music, not noise.”

And, third, consider the follow-up. Rubrics are excellent tools because they establish criteria for success and help students self-monitor. But the rubric has to be written in student-friendly language. With an accessible rubric, the student can chart her progress from one piece of writing to another. You can follow-up on a writing assignment with mini-lessons, using authentic sentences from student writing as models of good writing, not only deficient writing.

If you’d like students to take real responsibility for their own writing growth, you may be interested in a resource that I’ve created called RxEdit and RxRevise. There you will find a collection of DIY lessons keyed to various writing needs. You can refer students to these lessons on an as-needed basis. It’s a great way to differentiate instruction. RxEdit and RxRevise are available for free on my website .

Response From Kate Wolfe Maxlow & Karen Sanzo

Kate Wolfe Maxlow and Karen Sanzo’s are co-authors of 20 Formative Assessment Strategies that Work: A Guide Across Content and Grade Levels . Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Professional Learning Coordinator at Hampton City Schools and Karen Sanzo is a professor of Educational Foundations and Leadership at Old Dominion University:

How many times in school did you write something that made perfect sense to you only to have your teacher or professor write a big, red question mark next to it? The purpose of writing is to communicate thoughts and ideas to an audience, but because the writer cannot simultaneously be both the author and the audience, young writers often require a great deal of feedback in order to learn how to write clearly for an intended audience. Therefore, it is immensely important that teachers provide quality, frequent feedback to students on their writing.

To this end, it is also important to remember that the role of the teacher is to help students improve, not necessarily to expect a perfect product. Marzano (2017) explains that educators “should view learning as a constructive process in which students constantly update their knowledge.” Likewise, Hattie (2017) emphasizes the importance of helping students to engage in metacognitive strategies, such as Planning and Prediction, Elaboration and Organization, and Evaluation and Reflection. When we think of writing as a constructive process in which we should help students engage in metacognitive strategies, we realize how crucial it is that we provide students with feedback throughout the entire writing process, not simply at the end.

What does this look like? Imagine that you give students the following prompt: Explain why we remember George Washington today. Before students begin to write, have them make a plan that includes how they will conduct research, what questions they will ask, and how they will record answers. Check in with each student and then—this is key—provide feedback on their plans. As students begin to implement their plan and conduct research, collect information, and outline their paper, provide feedback on that, too.

What form does that feedback take? Well, whether it’s electronic (such as using Google Docs), verbal, or written doesn’t matter as much as the kind of thinking that the teacher asks the student to do when providing the feedback. For instance, a student has to do less work and actually learns less when a teacher writes, “George Washington did not have wooden teeth,” than if the teacher writes, “Can you find other sources that confirm that George Washington had wooden teeth?” or even “George Washington’s teeth are indeed an interesting subject; do you think we would remember him even if he had his own teeth based on his other accomplishments? What are the biggest reasons we remember him today?”

Feedback can, of course, also concern writing style. If feedback is too prescribed, we cheat students out of critical- and creative-thinking opportunities; if it is too vague, we risk frustrating them. For instance, instead of simply writing, “Vary your sentence style,” when a student starts each sentence in a paragraph with, “We remember George Washington because...,” a teacher could ask, “How can you start each sentence differently in this paragraph to keep the reader’s attention?” This points students in the right direction and also helps them understand why the change is important.

Lastly, while it’s important to give students feedback on their writing, feedback works best when we also collect it from students (Hattie, 2009). The more we ask students to self-evaluate and reflect on their work, the greater the impact on their achievement (Hattie, 2017). To that end, it can work well to have students first self-evaluate their writing using the rubric then come to a writing conference prepared with examples of what’s working in their paper and where they need help. When we give feedback like this, we encourage students not only to become better writers, but better thinkers as well.

Hattie, J (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge

Hattie, J. (2017). Hattie’s 2017 updated list of factors influencing student achievement. Retrieved from https://www.visiblelearningplus.com/sites/default/files/250%20Influences.pdf

Marzano (2017). The New Art and Science of Teaching. Bloomington, IN: ASCD & Solution Tree Press.

Response From Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller is currently an instructional coach at the Shanghai American School in China. He also serves on the National Faculty for the Buck Institute for Education and ASCD, where he consults on a variety of topics. He has worked with educators in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, China, Japan, Indonesia, India, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and the Dominican Republic:

Because we care about our students, we often do two things wrong: We give too much feedback or we tell students the answer in the feedback. Too much feedback is often ground in the traditional “final draft” way of writing, where the teacher collects the papers and then spends hours marking and providing written feedback near the end of the unit and close to when the assignment is due. This is often too much for students to process and/or can be too late. “Why didn’t you tell me my opening paragraph needed work when I wrote it a week ago?” Instead, teachers should provide feedback in smaller chunks in a more ongoing way. This makes the feedback manageable and timely.

For the second problem, teachers should focus on prompting and asking good questions to probe student thinking in the feedback they write. Instead of correcting a large amount of punctuation errors for students, write: “I’m noticing errors in comma and other punctuation usage in your second paragraph.” Here, the student must seek out those errors and correct them. They must learn! If the teacher does all the corrections for the students, then that teacher has done all the thinking for the student. In fact, it may have robbed that student of an opportunity to learn. Feedback should cause students to think and learn, not give away all the answers.

One final rule—don’t give feedback unless you can devote time for students to use and process it. We’ve all made the mistakes where we give feedback on the summative assessment and then students don’t use it. This is because we have indicated to them that it is summative and it is too late to improve. Teachers waste their time, and students don’t find value in the feedback.

Response From David Campos & Kathleen Fad

David Campos, Ph.D., is a professor of education at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in special education, multicultural education, and instructional design and delivery. He has written books on LGBT youth, childhood health and wellness, and the schooling of Latinos. He has co-authored two books with Kathleen Fad: Tools for Teaching Writing (ASCD 2014) and Practical Ideas That Really Work for English Language Learners (Pro-Ed).

Kathleen Fad, Ph.D., is an author and consultant whose professional experience has spanned more than 30 years as a general education teacher, special education teacher, and university professor. Kathy’s specialty is designing practical, common-sense strategies that are research-based:

We also consider the idea of giving feedback from the special education perspective, and, that is, giving feedback so that it is individualized. Our experiences have taught us that in any given classroom, many students may struggle with the same writing issues, but most will have unique difficulties with their writing.

To help teachers give effective feedback on student writing, we created an evaluation protocol based on eight writing traits (in Tools for Teaching Writing, ASCD). Teachers can use this protocol to isolate the areas of writing that individual students struggle with the most. We identified qualities associated with each trait, which provides the teacher with a common language to use when she conferences with individual students.

Teachers can similarly create their own evaluation measure that has qualities associated with the traits or conventions of writing they address in their lessons. For example, teachers can ask themselves, “How does good presentation manifest in student writing?” Then, they can work toward developing the qualities of presentation they can regularly use in their instruction and student feedback. The key to effective feedback is to give students concrete qualities about the writing trait or convention and use those regularly in their conferences with students.

After teachers have developed this common language about writing, students can learn to self-reflect on their work. As a way of giving feedback, teachers can provide students with checklists associated with the qualities of the trait and have the students self-reflect or review their peers’ writing.

Thanks to Susan, Cheryl, Amy, Kate, Karen, Andrew, David, and Kathleen for their contributions.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

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Reflection and Reflective Writing - Skills Guide

• Reflective Assignments
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Reflecting on Feedback

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Reflecting on feedback

What is reflectiong on feedback?

Feedback is designed to help you to identify your own strengths and weaknesses in a piece of work.  It can help you improve on your work by building on the positive comments and using the critical ones to inform changes in your future writing.  Therefore, feedback forms a critical role in your learning and helps you to improve each piece of work.   As with all reflection, reflecting on your feedback should follow the three stages of reflection outlined in earlier in this guide.

What should I do with feedback?

Try to identify the main points of the feedback.  What does it say?  Can you break it down into main points or areas of improvement?  Writing these down can be good to refer to later. You may find keeping all of your feedback in one place helps, as it makes it easier to look back and identify common mistakes.  Identifying the main points of the feedback is the descriptive stage of reflection.

Once you have done this, move on to the critical thinking stage.  How do you feel about the feedback?  What are you particularly proud of?  Is there anything you are disappointed by?  Are there any points where you need further clarification from your lecturer?

Finally, there is the future focused stage of reflection.  How will this feedback influence how you complete your next assignment?  What will you do the same?  What will you do differently?  You may find it helpful to put together an action plan ready for when you begin your next module.

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• 10 Types of Essay Feedback and How to Respond to Them

The moment of truth has arrived: you’ve got your marked essay back and you’re eagerly scanning through it, taking in the amount of red pen, and looking at the grade and hastily scrawled feedback at the end.

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After deciphering the handwriting, you’re able to see a brief assessment of how you’ve performed in this essay, and your heart either leaps or sinks. Ideally, you’d receive detailed feedback telling you exactly where you fell short and providing helpful guidance on how to improve next time. However, the person marking your essay probably doesn’t have time for that, so instead leaves you very brief remarks that you then have to decode in order to understand how you can do better. In this article, we look at some of the common sorts of remarks you might receive in essay feedback, what they mean, and how to respond to them or take them on board so that you can write a better essay next time – no matter how good this one was!

1. “Too heavily reliant on critics”

We all fall into the trap of regurgitating whatever scholarship we happen to have read in the run-up to writing the essay, and it’s a problem that reveals that many students have no idea what their own opinion is. We’re so busy paraphrasing what scholars have said that we forget to think about whether we actually agree with what they’ve said. This is an issue we discussed in a recent article on developing your own opinion , in which we talked about how to approach scholarship with an open and critical mind, make up your own mind and give your own opinion in your essays. If you’ve received this kind of feedback, the person marking your essay has probably noticed that you’ve followed exactly the same line of thinking as one or more of the books on your reading list, without offering any kind of original comment. Take a look at the article linked to just now and you’ll soon be developing your own responses.

2. “Too short”

If your essay falls significantly short of the prescribed word count, this could suggest that you haven’t put in enough work. Most essays will require extensive reading before you can do a topic justice, and if you’ve struggled to fill the word count, it’s almost certainly because you haven’t done enough reading, and you’ve therefore missed out a significant line of enquiry. This is perhaps a sign that you’ve left it too late to write your essay, resulting in a rushed and incomplete essay (even if you consider it finished, it’s not complete if it hasn’t touched on topics of major relevance). This problem can be alleviated by effective time management, allowing plenty of time for the research phase of your essay and then enough time to write a detailed essay that touches on all the important arguments. If you’re struggling to think of things to say in your essay, try reading something on the topic that you haven’t read before. This will offer you a fresh perspective to talk about, and possibly help you to understand the topic clearly enough to start making more of your own comments about it.

3. “Too long”

[pullquote] “The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter” – Blaise Pascal [/pullquote]It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s actually much easier to write an essay that’s too long than one that’s too short. This is because we’re all prone to waffling when we’re not entirely sure what we want to say, and/or because we want to show the person marking our essay that we’ve read extensively, even when some of the material we’ve read isn’t strictly relevant to the essay question we’ve been set. But the word count is there for a reason: it forces you to be clear and concise, leaving out what isn’t relevant. A short (say, 500-word) essay is actually a challenging academic exercise, so if you see fit to write twice the number of words, the person marking the essay is unlikely to be impressed. Fifty to a hundred words over the limit probably won’t be too much of an issue if that’s less than 10% of the word count, and will probably go unnoticed, but if you’ve ended up with something significantly over this, it’s time to start trimming. Re-read what you’ve written and scrutinise every single line. Does it add anything to your argument? Are you saying in ten words what could be said in three? Is there a whole paragraph that doesn’t really contribute to developing your argument? If so, get rid of it. This kind of ruthless editing and rephrasing can quickly bring your word count down, and it results in a much tighter and more carefully worded essay.

4. “Contradicts itself”

Undermining your own argument is an embarrassing mistake to make, but you can do it without realising when you’ve spent so long tweaking your essay that you can no longer see the wood for the trees. Contradicting yourself in an essay is also a sign that you haven’t completely understood the issues and haven’t formed a clear opinion on what the evidence shows. To avoid this error, have a detailed read through your essay before you submit it and look in particular detail at the statements you make. Looking at them in essence and in isolation, do any of them contradict each other? If so, decide which you think is more convincing and make your argument accordingly.

5. “Too many quotations”

It’s all too easy to hide behind the words of others when one is unsure of something, or lacking a complete understanding of a topic. This insecurity leads us to quote extensively from either original sources or scholars, including long chunks of quoted text as a nifty way of upping the word count without having to reveal our own ignorance (too much). But you won’t fool the person marking your essay by doing this: they’ll see immediately that you’re relying too heavily on the words of others, without enough intelligent supporting commentary, and it’s particularly revealing when most of the quotations are from the same source (which shows that you haven’t read widely enough). It’s good to include some quotations from a range of different sources, as it adds colour to your essay, shows that you’ve read widely and demonstrates that you’re thinking about different kinds of evidence. However, if you’ve received this kind of feedback, you can improve your next essay by not quoting more than a sentence at a time, making the majority of the text of your essay your own words, and including plenty of your own interpretation and responses to what you’ve quoted. Another word of advice regarding quotations: one of my tutors once told me is that one should never end an essay on a quotation. You may think that this is a clever way of bringing your essay to a conclusion, but actually you’re giving the last word to someone else when it’s your essay, and you should make the final intelligent closing remark. Quoting someone else at the end is a cop-out that some students use to get out of the tricky task of writing a strong final sentence, so however difficult the alternative may seem, don’t do it!

6. “Not enough evidence”

In an essay, every point you make must be backed up with supporting evidence – it’s one of the fundamental tenets of academia. You can’t make a claim unless you can show what has lead you to it, whether that’s a passage in an original historical source, the result of some scientific research, or any other form of information that would lend credibility to your statement. A related problem is that some students will quote a scholar’s opinion as though it were concrete evidence of something; in fact, that is just one person’s opinion, and that opinion has been influenced by the scholar’s own biases. The evidence they based the opinion on might be tenuous, so it’s that evidence you should be looking at, not the actual opinion of the scholar themselves. As you write your essay, make a point of checking that everything you’ve said is adequately supported.

7. “All over the place” / “Confused”

An essay described as “all over the place” – or words to that effect – reveals that the student who wrote it hasn’t developed a clear line of argument, and that they are going off at tangents and using an incoherent structure in which one point doesn’t seem to bear any relation to the previous one. A tight structure is vital in essay-writing, as it holds the reader’s interest and helps build your argument to a logical conclusion. You can avoid your essay seeming confused by writing an essay plan before you start. This will help you get the structure right and be clear about what you want to say before you start writing.

8. “Misses the point”

This feedback can feel particularly damning if you’ve spent a long time writing what you thought was a carefully constructed essay. A simple reason might be that you didn’t read the question carefully enough. But it’s also a problem that arises when students spend too long looking at less relevant sources and not enough at the most important ones, because they ran out of time, or because they didn’t approach their reading lists in the right order, or because they failed to identify correctly which the most important sources actually were. This leads to students focusing on the wrong thing, or perhaps getting lost in the details. The tutor marking the essay, who has a well-rounded view of the topic, will be baffled if you’ve devoted much of your essay to discussing something you thought was important, but which they know to be a minor detail when compared with the underlying point. If you’re not sure which items on your reading list to tackle first, you could try asking your tutor next time if they could give you some pointers on which of the material they recommend you focus on first. It can also be helpful to prompt yourself from time to time with the question “What is the point?”, as this will remind you to take a step back and figure out what the core issues are.

9. “Poor presentation”

This kind of remark is likely to refer to issues with the formatting of your essay, spelling and punctuation , or general style. Impeccable spelling and grammar are a must, so proofread your essay before you submit it and check that there are no careless typos (computer spell checks don’t always pick these up). In terms of your writing style , you might get a comment like this if the essay marker found your writing either boring or in a style inappropriate to the context of a formal essay. Finally, looks matter: use a sensible, easy-to-read font, print with good-quality ink and paper if you’re printing, and write neatly and legibly if you’re handwriting. Your essay should be as easy to read as possible for the person marking it, as this lessens their workload and makes them feel more positively towards your work.

10. “Very good”

On the face of it, this is the sort of essay feedback every student wants to hear. But when you think about it, it’s not actually very helpful – particularly when it’s accompanied by a mark that wasn’t as high as you were aiming for. With these two words, you have no idea why you didn’t achieve top marks. In the face of such (frankly lazy) marking from your teacher or lecturer, the best response is to be pleased that you’ve received a positive comment, but to go to the person who marked it and ask for more comments on what you could have done to get a higher mark. They shouldn’t be annoyed at your asking, because you’re simply striving to do better every time.

General remarks on responding to essay feedback

We end with a few general pieces of advice on how to respond to essay feedback.

• Don’t take criticism personally.
• Remember that feedback is there to help you improve.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for more feedback if what they’ve said isn’t clear.
• Don’t rest on your laurels – if you’ve had glowing feedback, it’s still worth asking if there’s anything you could have done to make the essay even better.

It can be difficult to have one’s hard work (metaphorically) ripped apart or disparaged, but feedback is ultimately there to help you get higher grades, get into better universities, and put you on a successful career path; so keep that end goal in mind when you get your essay back.

Image credits: banner ; library ; snake ; magnifying glass ; dartboard ; suggestions box . 

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• Writing Tips

How to Give Feedback on an Essay

• 4-minute read
• 9th May 2019

Whether you’re teaching or just helping a friend, being asked to offer feedback on an essay can be intimidating if you’ve not done it before. We do, though, have a few tips to share on this subject.

Content vs. Quality of Writing

There are two main things you may want to offer feedback on when reading an essay. These are:

• The content of the essay (i.e. what the author is arguing)
• How it is written (i.e. how well they communicate their argument)

The exact nature of the feedback you provide will depend on the topic and type of essay you are reading. But there are some things you might want to comment on for any paper, including:

• Spelling, grammar and punctuation errors
• Overall structure and readability
• Academic vocabulary and writing style
• Factual inaccuracies or ambiguities
• Whether the author provides evidence for their arguments
• Clarity and consistency of referencing

Ideally, you’ll provide feedback on all of these. However, if you’re simply reading the first draft of a paper to help a friend, you may want to check what kind of feedback they want.

Try, too, to balance the positive and negative feedback. It’s just as important to note things that are good as things that need clarifying. After all, if the author sees nothing but negative comments, they could be discouraged. Positive feedback, on the other hand, is a great motivator.

Comments in Margins vs. In-Depth Feedback

One way of leaving feedback is to make notes in the margins (either on paper or using the comment function in Microsoft Word). These should be short notes related to a specific issue, such as highlighting a misspelled word, an incorrect fact, or a missing citation.

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Try not to leave too many comments in the margins, though. If there is a recurring problem, such as a word that the author has repeatedly misspelled, don’t comment on it every time. Instead, leave a comment noting the pattern of errors. This highlights the issue without overwhelming the reader.

You may also want to provide overall feedback at the end of the paper. Ideally, this in-depth feedback should:

• Start positive (e.g. This is a well-researched, well-organised paper ).
• Focus on one or two major issues rather than repeating everything you commented on in the margins. If there are too many big problems to pick one or two, you may want to speak to the author in person instead.
• Provide concrete criticism on specific problems, including page or section numbers where relevant, not just general criticisms (e.g. You are missing several citations in section three, so please check… rather than The referencing in this paper could be improved… ).

If you’re offering feedback on an essay that is currently in progress, focus on issues that the author could improve in the next draft. If you’re marking a final draft, however, you may want to focus on what they can learn from the essay’s overall strengths and weaknesses.

Marking Criteria

Finally, if you’re teaching on a university course – or even just marking papers – you should have access to the marking criteria. These will be set by the university or whoever is teaching the class. And, crucially, these guidelines will set out in detail what a good paper should do.

These criteria can also be useful when planning a paper, so it’s worth asking about the marking criteria even if you’re writing an essay rather than offering feedback! And if you’re not sure where to find the marking criteria for your course, check the university website or ask your professor.

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5 benefits of feedback — and why it matters

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Improved performance

Transferred ownership of professional development

Diffused office conflicts before they happen

Increased employee engagement

Give your people something they actually want

How often should employees receive feedback?

If you're in HR, it can feel like you're the sole driver of performance and development processes. And while you are responsible for kickstarting a culture of feedback within the organization, your success is entirely dependent on managers and employees embracing and owning it.

When employees feel comfortable sharing, asking for, and receiving analysis of their performance , you can expect notable changes in how your company operates. To exemplify the importance of feedback, here are five positive changes you can expect.

1. Improved performance at all levels

Feedback is a critical component in improving performance organization-wide and is a two-way street. Not only is it important for managers to regularly provide feedback to their direct reports, but employees should share it with their managers and their peers as well.

As the amount of feedback exchanged increases, it provides managers with insights into how their leadership skills . It also gives employees insights into their work from the people they work most closely with. And positive feedback has proven to have a positive impact on your business outcomes. 

The result is that everyone is able to reach better decisions , improve performance, and generally succeed in their role. 

2. Transferred ownership of professional development

Everyone has a unique set of strengths and developmental areas, making it difficult to apply a “one-size-fits-all” model to professional development . There are plenty of learning styles, like asynchronous learning or in-person workshops. 

By implementing   an easy and structured way to request feedback   when it matters most, you are actively putting people in the driver’s seat of their development instead of having to constantly initiate the process.

Some of the most successful people take the opportunity to ask for feedback at the end of a big meeting or project to ensure they get actionable insights in a timely, contextualized manner.

With this shift, people become accustomed to requesting feedback whenever they want or need it, creating a workforce of empowered employees , while also taking pressure off HR.

3. Diffused office conflicts before they happen

Another benefit of a strong feedback culture is that it gives employees the tools to address issues before they escalate. When people don’t feel able to share feedback with one another even on the smaller things, over time they can transform into workplace conflict .

On the other hand, when people are used to regularly sharing feedback, they become more comfortable with having these difficult conversations .

This means they won’t feel anxious about asking their co-workers to speak lower when on the phone, or to be more consistent with having their part of a project completed on time.

Getting into the habit of sharing feedback means they are better equipped to address any kind of situation rather than bottling it up.

4. Increased employee engagement

There is a strong correlation between feedback exchange and employee engagement . Not only because of its potential to resolve issues quickly and increase knowledge sharing, but also because it creates a way for the team and individual successes to be recognized more regularly.

Remember feedback isn’t just about personal development . It's also an opportunity to celebrate wins big and small.

Understandably, when people feel valued and recognized for their efforts they feel motivated and engaged . In fact,   72% of employees in a recent survey   ranked recognition as having the greatest impact on engagement.

5. Giving your people something they actually want

According to PwC, nearly 60% of employees surveyed stated that they would like feedback on a daily or weekly basis — a number that increased to   72% for employees under age 30 .

There are many reasons why people don’t get the feedback they are looking for: it’s time-consuming, stressful to give constructive feedback , and in the beginning, it’s not easy.

However, by focusing on building an employee-driven feedback culture, you can break down some of these barriers. Supported by coaching — and with additional training and resources — you can create a process where people can   freely exchange feedback   with anyone within the organization.

When building out a feedback system, it’s important to be strategic about frequency. As we mentioned, many employees like to receive feedback weekly if not daily. That said, it’s important for the feedback to remain relevant and valuable to the employee.

To make the most impact, it can be helpful for managers to ask the following questions before offering feedback:

• Is this a pivotal point for the project, or role?
• Are they learning a new skill with delicate or risky implementation? (For example, presenting to the board for budget approval.)
• Do you simply want a check-in? (For example, your team is working on an important project with their peers and lots of change is happening simultaneously.)

Once managers and teams have these questions answered, they should have a good idea of whether or not to offer their feedback at the time.

Try empowering your organization through feedback

It’s clear that effective feedback has its advantages. By leveraging this form of communication, teams can feel more confident and empowered in their roles and more engaged in their work. Once you have a cadence that works for the team, you can start to see some of these benefits make their way through your organization.

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Madeline Miles

Madeline is a writer, communicator, and storyteller who is passionate about using words to help drive positive change. She holds a bachelor's in English Creative Writing and Communication Studies and lives in Denver, Colorado. In her spare time, she's usually somewhere outside (preferably in the mountains) — and enjoys poetry and fiction.

How managers get upward feedback from their team

How to get feedback from your employees, how to empower your team through feedback, how to give feedback using this 4-step framework, are you receptive to feedback follow this step-by-step guide, how to give constructive feedback as a manager, how a performance review template improves the feedback process, should you use the feedback sandwich 7 pros and cons, handle feedback like a boss and make it work for you, similar articles, 10 personal brand statements to put all eyes on you, 17 positive feedback examples to develop a winning team, why your company needs a strong feedback culture, why coworker feedback is so important and 5 ways to give it, feedback in communication: 5 areas to become a better communicator, 5 reasons why your company needs real-time feedback, 5+ ways to establish taking ownership as a core value at work, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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• v.13(4); 2017 Dec

How to give and receive feedback effectively

Georgia hardavella.

1 Dept of Respiratory Medicine, King’s College Hospital, London, UK

2 Dept of Respiratory Medicine and Allergy, King’s College London, London, UK

Ane Aamli-Gaagnat

3 Dept of Clinical Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

4 Faculty of Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, UK

Ilona Rousalova

5 1st Dept of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Care, 1st Medical School and General University Hospital, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

Katherina B. Sreter

6 Dept of Clinical Immunology, Pulmonology and Rheumatology, University Hospital Centre “Sestre Milosrdnice”, Zagreb, Croatia

In most European countries, feedback is embedded in education, training and daily professional activities. It is a valuable tool for indicating whether things are going in the right direction or whether redirection is required. In the world of healthcare professionals, it is intended to provide doctors with information about their practice through the eyes of their peers. Feedback is a valuable tool for doctors to gather information, consolidate their awareness of strengths and areas to improve, and aims to support effective behaviour. Doctors of all levels may be approached by peers or juniors to give feedback, or they may ask others to give feedback on their own performance.

Short abstract

Giving and receiving effective feedback are skills that are central in healthcare settings http://ow.ly/zZ1C30eVrH1

Feedback is the breakfast of champions . Ken Blanchard

Feedback is the fuel that drives improved performance . Eric Parsloe

Giving and receiving feedback is not an easy task and poses significant challenges for both sides. In this article, we will discuss pragmatic feedback models, how to overcome barriers to an effective feedback and tips for giving effective feedback, as well as how to receive feedback and make the most out of it.

Types of feedback

• Informal feedback is the most frequent form. It is provided on a day-to-day basis, and is given on any aspect of a doctor’s professional performance and conduct, by any member of the multidisciplinary team. It is usually in verbal form.
• Formal feedback comes as part of a structured assessment; it can be offered by any member of the multidisciplinary team, but most frequently by peers or superiors. It is usually in written form.
• Formative feedback, “for learning”, is about a learner’s progress at a particular time through a course or during the acquisition of a new skill. It provides opportunities to gain feedback, reflect and redirect effort (where appropriate) before completing a final assessment. It gives you the experience of writing or performing a task without it having a direct impact on your formal progress and relies on continuous encouragement.
• Summative feedback, “of learning”, measures performance, often against a standard, and comes with a mark/grade and feedback to explain your mark. It can be used to rank or judge individuals

For the purpose of this article, we will focus on formal and informal feedback.

Why is feedback important?

As a general rule, it seems that learners value feedback more when it is given by someone they respect as a role model. Appropriate feedback contributes significantly in developing learners’ competence and confidence at all stages of their professional careers; it helps them think about the gap between actual and desired performance, and identify ways to narrow the gap and improve. For health professionals in particular, it promotes reflective and experiential learning ,which involves “training on the job”, and reflecting on experiences, incidents and feelings. More importantly, feedback aims to develop performance to a higher level by dealing with underperformance in a constructive way.

If we do not give feedback, this will come with a cost. The learner can assume that everything is fine and will continue practicing in the same way. This leads into a false assessment of their own skills and abilities, and builds up a false perception.

Who gives feedback?

In professional life, your patients and anyone working with you as a member of the multidisciplinary team can give you feedback. Feedback in these cases is meant to be given reciprocally, i.e. you will also need to give feedback to your peers. We have listed the most common sources of feedback in figure 1 .

Sources of feedback.

Educational or clinical supervisors

Your educational or clinical supervisor can be a major source of feedback. They are meant to act as your mentor, monitor your clinical and educational progress, and ensure you receive appropriate career guidance and planning. Educational or clinical supervisors do not formally exist in all respiratory medicine training programmes across Europe and this role may be informally undertaken ad hoc by the clinical lead of the department, a supervising consultant or a PhD/MSc supervisor. Regardless of the role allocation, feedback is integral to the process, and should cover clinical and academic practice, professional conduct, complaints and/or serious incidents that should be discussed in a reflective, nonjudgmental manner to allow improvement and personal development. Should this occur in a structured and organised manner with a delegated supervisor, it will be helpful for the learner.

As previously stated, the feedback process should be reciprocal. Departmental trainee feedback is essential to monitor and improve the quality of specialty training. Trainees’ feedback must be used with other sources of information to review and improve the training programmes and posts. Obtaining this type of feedback can sometimes be challenging as it may be biased by the fear of identification and labelling of trainees; therefore, in some countries, it is given anonymously. This feedback should also be an opportunity to raise concerns about patient safety or colleague bullying and undermining.

Peers and colleagues

People you work with as members of a multidisciplinary team are expected to provide their feedback in a constructive manner, being open and supportive. This multisource feedback aims to improve your own understanding of where things stand; it is a clear “reality check” and, at the same time, gives a clear direction of travel in terms of improving behaviours, attitudes and skills. If you have not received such feedback, ask for it.

Patients’ feedback provides valuable information about what patients and service users think about the healthcare services offered. Examining patients’ feedback will give a direct insight into what is working well and what needs further improvement in the way care is delivered. Furthermore, patient feedback to healthcare professionals is also important as it highlights examples of good practice where lessons can be learnt and areas of concern where improvements can be made. Measuring patients’ feedback and experiences of care/treatment highlights areas that need to improve to provide a patient-led healthcare service.

Feedback models

There are several different models of giving feedback. Not every model is applicable in all daily cases of providing feedback. Below we have listed some feedback models.

The “feedback sandwich”

The feedback sandwich starts and concludes with positive feedback, and what can be considered as the more critical feedback is “sandwiched” between the positive aspects. This can be applicable in everyday clinical practise. However, if you use this method continuously, it might lose its effectiveness. The person receiving our feedback will only wait for the “but” in the middle of your sentence. In this case, make sure to give positive feedback on its own when the opportunity arises. If your coworkers feel acknowledged daily, they will be more open to all kinds of feedback when applicable. A couple of examples of the feedback sandwich follow.

“You have done really well in the acute take; you prioritised cases efficiently and your management plans were well structured. I was thinking we could discuss a few things I believe you can further improve such as timely communication of messages to the nursing staff and emphasising the urgency of particular tasks. After completing your management plan in the medical notes, you can consider discussing verbally the urgency of some tasks with the nurse looking after the patient so that they are alerted and can proceed with them promptly rather than relying on them going back to read the medical notes, which can take longer due to the overwhelming emergency department. Additional verbal communication will complement the excellent quality of your work, will ensure your well-structured management plan is implemented in a timely manner for the patient’s benefit and will further improve your patient’s outcome.”

“I noticed you made the patient and relatives feel very comfortable while you explained the bronchoscopy test to them, and your explanation was very clear. It would have helped further if you had given them patient information leaflets, as at times they were looking a bit overwhelmed. However, you have set a time for meeting with them again, and this will give you the opportunity of answering any questions and giving the leaflets.”

“Chronological fashion” feedback

Chronological fashion feedback focuses on reflecting observations chronologically, reiterating the events that occurred during the session back to the learner. For instance, an observer can go through a learning session and give feedback from beginning to the end.

“The first thing you did really well when you entered the room was to introduce yourself to the patient. Then, you proceeded with physical examination without getting the patient’s consent for this and at that point, the patient looked distressed. It was after that when you explained what you would do and got their consent, and consequently, the patient was more relaxed during the rest of the physical examination.”

This is helpful for short feedback sessions but you can become bogged down in detail during long sessions.

Pendleton model

The Pendleton model was developed in 1984. It is more learner centred, conversation based and identifies an action plan or goals: “reflection for action”. The facilitator needs to check whether the learner wants and is ready for feedback. Then, the learner gives some background about what is being assessed and states what was done well. This aims to create a safe environment first by highlighting positives and consequently this prevents defensiveness. The facilitator then reinforces these positives and the learner suggests what could be improved. This is important, as weaknesses are dissected to offer opportunities for reflection. The facilitator advises how this could be improved and a mutually agreed action plan is formed. The main idea is to use open questions and give the learner the opportunity to think and reflect.

“What do you think went well?”

“What do you think could be done differently?”

“What could be further improved?”

“How can this be achieved?”

Barriers to effective feedback

Various factors can impact on effective feedback and act as barriers ( table 1 ). It is important to be able to identify and overcome them. Effective feedback is dependent on communication skills and as such, it is vital that the message intended by the sender is understood by the receiver in the same terms.

Generalised feedback that is not related to specific facts and does not give advice on how to improve behaviour

Generalised feedback is unhelpful and can be confusing. The person receiving feedback remains unclear about the actual purpose of the session and usually starts exploring hidden agendas that might have triggered the feedback. It disrupts professional relationships and causes unnecessary suspicion.

A lack of respect for the source of feedback

We all tend to accept feedback more from people we value. In the opposite case, it is advised that you ask another colleague that was present to provide informal feedback rather than doing it yourself as otherwise, this might impact on professional relationships and feedback will be ignored.

Fear of upsetting your colleague or damaging your professional relationship with them

The person giving feedback might be different from the recipient in terms of sex, age, hierarchy, and educational and cultural background. These factors may result in a demotivating feedback session. Therefore, feedback needs to be given in a supportive, empathic and relaxed manner, and on a background of a working relationship based on mutual respect.

The recipient of feedback being resistant or defensive when receiving it

Poor handling of situations in which the recipient is resistant or defensive can result in a dismissive approach; therefore, feedback will be disregarded.

Physical barriers

Giving feedback loudly in a noisy corridor, or in the presence of other colleagues or patients, is inappropriate. Such feedback loses its objectivity and the recipient may consider this as an insult that will impact their professional relationship with their peers and patients.

Language barrier or lack of knowledge regarding cultural diversity

Language and cultural barriers convey unclear messages and result in unclassified assumptions. It is important to confirm the message sent is the message that is actually received. All feedback sessions should be held in a respectful and supportive manner.

Personal agendas

Personal agendas should not influence feedback. As soon as you realise this is a possibility, it is best not to give feedback as this will be perceived by the recipient negatively. Personal reflection will identify the reasons behind this and will be crucial in improving this aspect.

Lacking confidence

A person given feedback who lacks confidence may exhibit shyness, difficulty in being assertive, or lack of awareness of their own rights and opportunities.

Tips for and principles of giving effective feedback

When preparing to give feedback, think about what you would like to achieve. What do you want to highlight, what went well and where could there be some improvements? Table 2 summarises tips on giving feedback. Planning in advance is crucial to the process. Planning should encounter to whom you are giving feedback. There is no “one-size fits all” approach; feedback should be tailored to each individual and the corresponding situation. It is of vital importance that you reflect carefully about how you want to convey your message and focus on a couple of key points without overwhelming the learner. The learner might not be ready ( i.e. not receptive), which could have adverse effects. Therefore, think about how they will react to the feedback and what your response might be.

Tips on giving effective feedback

Generally, you will provide one-on-one feedback and you must make sure to give it privately. Offering public feedback will only be perceived as a criticism by the learner and overall it may have detrimental effects on departmental relationships. The learner may feel insulted and undermined whereas their self-confidence will also be affected as they feel this may result in losing their colleagues’ respect. On some occasions, it is possible to give group feedback but then you need to restrict your feedback to the group as a whole without singling out individuals.

It is best to ensure that feedback is given in a timely manner, i.e. as soon after the event as possible, and most organisations will have a regular feedback scheduled (weekly or monthly). However, should the situation mandate it, you can schedule an ad hoc session. Feedback and reflection work best when the memory is still fresh. When feedback is given with great delay ( i.e. months after the incident), then its objectivity will be debated.

In preparing for the feedback, think of specific situations and, if you want to highlight some negative actions, potential alternatives. Do not bring up past actions unless you wish to underscore a certain behaviour or pattern. Also, focus on tasks, actions and objective events rather than personality traits, which tend to be more subjective.

When giving feedback, start off gently trying to implement one of the feedback models mentioned above. For example, you could ask the learner how they think things went. This will give you insight into their experience and enables you to assess how well they can judge their actions, behaviour or performance. Encourage self-reflection as this will allow the learner to be mindful of their actions or behaviour ( table 3 ). As a rule, start with the positive and then move on to negative events. Be very specific and give examples of certain actions or situations, and use “I” when giving feedback.

Open-ended questions for giving feedback that encourage self-reflection

“When you said…, I thought that you were…”

Moreover, link the feedback to the learner’s overall development and/or stated outcomes, which might provide an additional reason for being receptive to the feedback.

Finally, be aware of nonverbal clues, such as your facial expression, body language, posture, voice and eye contact. These might convey their own message, which could be in contrast with what you are trying to achieve.

• Emotions are deduced through facial expression. Thus, smile in the correct manner to express warmth and goodwill.
• Eye contact creates a feeling of connection but can also be too intense. Make eye contact without staring.
• The way we feel about different people effects the way we speak. The tone and the volume of your voice can give away how you feel. Try to match body language, how you use your voice and tone in a natural way.
• Avoid looking strict by keeping your arms crossed or like you don’t care by sitting slumped. An open posture gives the expression of an open conversation.
• Stressed situations make us breathe faster; when we are tired, it is easy to sigh more. Long breaths make us calmer and are likely to make people around us calmer. Try to take a few deep breaths before giving feedback.
• Smartphones and screens with emails, Facebook messages, recent meetings or phone calls: there are so many things to steal our attention and this can only be evident. The person in front of you will notice when you are looking at the screen, and you are less likely to hear and understand what they are saying. Focus your attention on the person in front of you when giving feedback and when you are listening. After giving the feedback, reflect on how it went. Did it go as you expected and how do think it was perceived by the learner? Sometimes, you can misjudge the delivery of your feedback but make sure you learn from this for the next time. Every learner is different and requires a different approach.

In the end, remember to summarise the session in a letter/e-mail and to follow up on what has been discussed. Feedback aims to improve performance and it is advised that time is given to the recipient of feedback to rectify behaviours, then proceed with a follow up session to measure whether or not that is happening, and then make adjustments as you go.

Receiving feedback

A learner-centred approach is often recommended to effectively receive feedback. This involves adopting an open-minded listening strategy, reflection and a willingness to improve one’s performance. The recipients of the feedback are asked to evaluate their own performance and assess how their actions impact others. This approach works best when the feedback is ongoing, regular, supportive, and originating from a wide range of reliable and valid external sources. When this is not the case, the learners may not have sufficient understanding to self-assess and correct behaviours that may hinder their development. However, when constructive feedback is used wisely, it can positively impact the learners’ personal and professional development.

It is very helpful to receive feedback from leaders/teachers in real time and firsthand. When the learner is unable to respond positively, however, this often inhibits the feedback providers from giving direct face-to-face, personalised feedback on a regular basis. Learners’ responses to criticism may present in negative ways ( i.e. anger, denial, blaming or rationalisation), particularly when they discount their own ability to take responsibility for their learning. It is important to view feedback as a means to reflect on strengths and weaknesses, and build on previously learned competencies. The result will be increased confidence and independence, while facilitating a stronger rapport with colleagues, other medical staff and patients.

In order for feedback to be effective, it has to be received well. How a recipient interprets and reacts to feedback is very important to the outcome of the teacher–learner relationship and future learning opportunities. Differing interpretations or uptakes of feedback may be based on a number of factors that include: personality, fear, confidence, context and individual reasoning processes. It is essential to develop an open dialogue between the person giving feedback and the recipient. Differences of opinion should be handled in a professional manner. Both parties should be comfortable, and able to focus on actively listening, engaging, reflecting and developing action points for future development. Effective communication is key to a successful feedback interaction.

Table 4 presents tips to the learner on receiving constructive feedback.

Tips for receiving feedback

Be a good listener

First, truly listen to what the feedback provider is saying, instead of immediately preparing a response, defence or attack. The feedback provider will feel more comfortable giving feedback if you are approachable and welcoming.

When in doubt, ask for clarification

If you did not hear it clearly the first time, politely ask for it to be repeated, then restate it in your own words. This will help you understand more about yourself and how others interpret your actions.

Embrace the feedback session as a learning opportunity

Assume that the feedback is constructive until proven otherwise, then consider and use those elements that are truly constructive. Thinking about your own actions in the context of the feedback provider’s comments is beneficial to making appropriate changes.

Remember to pause and think before responding

Your aim is to have a professional conversation that benefits you. Focus on understanding the feedback first, not on your immediate innate reaction. Reflection, and particularly self-reflection, is essential to feedback acceptance.

Avoid jumping to conclusions, and show that you are invested in the learning process and keen to improve

Ask for clarification and examples if statements are general, unclear or unsupported. It is important to validate the feedback by inviting details and specifics about the criticism. Assuming the feedback provider’s comments as reality, in the context of their perceptions and impressions, defuses your own negative feelings in the face of criticism.

Think positively and be open to helpful hints

You will get more out of the feedback session if you accept the comments positively (for consideration) rather than dismissively (for self-protection). You may disagree with the criticism if the facts are incorrect but this should be done in a graceful manner.

Learn from your mistakes and be motivated

Ask for suggestions of ways you might modify or change your behaviour. Do not be afraid to ask for advice on what and how to do differently. Seek to meet expectations and promptly address the undesired behaviours.

Be a good sport and show appreciation

Be respectful throughout the discussion and thank the person giving feedback. Being polite and appreciative will encourage future feedback.

Be proactive

Try out some of the suggestions, and make careful notes regarding any improvements and changes in behaviour. Following-up with the feedback provider enables the receiver to share how the feedback was helpful.

Giving and receiving effective feedback are skills that are central in healthcare settings. The whole process is closely linked with professional development and improved performance. Both of these impact the quality of healthcare services and patient satisfaction. Feedback should be constructive by focusing on behaviours that can be improved. Developing robust professional relationships is a prerequisite for giving/receiving constructive feedback that will act as a powerful motivator.

Conflict of interest None declared.

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When to Give Verbal Feedback — and When to Do It in Writing

• Sarah Gershman

Don’t default to your comfort zone. Deliver your message in the way that works best for the situation.

One of the many reasons why we dread (and avoid) giving feedback is that we believe it’s simply not going to work. While there are many reasons why feedback fails to deliver results, one that is easily overlooked is our choice of delivery — speaking or writing. You may be leaning on one style not because it’s best for the feedback you need to give, but because it’s most comfortable — or most convenient — for you. Consider what works best for the context, audience, and goals of your specific situation. Spoken and written feedback are both necessary, and each has their time and place. Practicing getting out of your feedback comfort zone when the situation calls for it will make you a stronger communicator all around.

You give clear feedback to your direct report. They acknowledge the feedback. And then…nothing changes. How many times have you been in this frustrating situation? While there are many reasons why feedback fails to deliver results , one that is easily overlooked is our choice of delivery: whether we give the feedback verbally or in writing. You may be leaning on one style not because it’s best for the feedback you need to give, but because it’s most comfortable — or most convenient — for you.

• Sarah Gershman is an executive speech coach and CEO of Green Room Speakers. She is a professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, where she teaches public speaking to leaders from around the globe.
• Casey Mank is a teacher, communications expert, and Plain Language advocate. She is the co-founder of women-owned company Bold Type. She has worked with writers from Kellogg’s, the USDA, Viacom Media, the Aspen Institute, the PR Council, the PR Society of America, and many more. Casey is proud to have helped thousands of writers get to the point.

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People also looked at

Original research article, feedback that leads to improvement in student essays: testing the hypothesis that “where to next” feedback is most powerful.

• 1 Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VI, Australia
• 2 Hattie Family Foundation, Melbourne, VI, Australia
• 3 Turnitin, LLC, Oakland, CA, United States

Feedback is powerful but variable. This study investigates which forms of feedback are more predictive of improvement to students’ essays, using Turnitin Feedback Studio –a computer augmented system to capture teacher and computer-generated feedback comments. The study used a sample of 3,204 high school and university students who submitted their essays, received feedback comments, and then resubmitted for final grading. The major finding was the importance of “where to next” feedback which led to the greatest gains from the first to the final submission. There is support for the worthwhileness of computer moderated feedback systems that include both teacher- and computer-generated feedback.

Introduction

One of the more powerful influences on achievement, prosocial development, and personal interactions is feedback–but it is also remarkably variable. Kluger and DeNis (1996) completed an influential meta-analysis of 131 studies and found an overall effect on 0.41 of feedback on performance and close to 40% of effects were negative. Since their paper there have been at least 23 meta-analyses on the effects of feedback, and recently Wisniewski et al. (2020) located 553 studies from these meta-analyses ( N = 59,287) and found an overall effect of 0.53. They found that feedback is more effective for cognitive and physical outcome measures than for motivational and behavioral outcomes. Feedback is more effective the more information it contains, and praise (for example), not only includes little information about the task, but it can also be diluting as receivers tend to recall the praise more than the content of the feedback. This study investigates which forms of feedback are more predictive of improvement to students’ essays, using Turnitin Feedback Studio–a computer augmented system to capture teacher- and computer-generated feedback comments.

Hattie and Timperley (2007) defined feedback as relating to actions or information provided by an agent (e.g., teacher, peer, book, parent, internet, experience) that provides information regarding aspects of one’s performance or understanding. This concept of feedback relates to its power to “fill the gap between what is understood and what is aimed to be understood” ( Sadler, 1989 ). Feedback can lead to increased effort, motivation, or engagement to reduce the discrepancy between the current status and the goal; it can lead to alternative strategies to understand the material; it can confirm for the student that they are correct or incorrect, or how far they have reached the goal; it can indicate that more information is available or needed; it can point to directions that the students could pursue; and, finally, it can lead to restructuring understandings.

To begin to unravel the moderator effects that lead to the marked variability of feedback, Hattie and Timperley (2007) argued that feedback can have different perspectives: "feed-up" (comparison of the actual status with a target status), "feed-back" (comparison of the actual status with a previous status), and "feed-forward" (explanation of the target status based on the actual status). They claimed that these related to the three feedback questions: Where am I going? How am I going? and Where to next? Additionally, feedback can be differentiated according to its level of cognitive complexity: It can refer to a task, a process, one’s self-regulation, or one’s self. Task level feedback means that someone receives feedback about the content, facts, or surface information (How well have the tasks been completed and understood?). Feedback at the level of process means that a person receives feedback on the processes or strategies of his or her performance (What needs to be done to understand and master the tasks?). Feedback at the level of self-regulation means that someone receives feedback about the individual’s regulation of the strategies they are using to their performance (What can be done to manage, guide, and monitor your own way of action?). The self-level focuses on the personal characteristics of the feedback recipient (often praise about the person). One of the arguments about the variability is that feedback needs to focus on the appropriate question and the optimal level of cognitive complexity. If not, the message can easily be ignored, misunderstood, and of low value to the recipient.

Another important distinction is between the giving and receiving of feedback. Students are more often the receiver, and this is becoming more a focus of research. Students indicate a preference for feedback that is specific, useful, and timely ( Pajares and Graham, 1998 ; Gamlem and Smith, 2013 ), relative to the criteria or standards they are assessed against ( Brown, 2009 ; Beaumont et al., 2011 ), and do not mind what form it comes provided they see it as informative to improve their learning. Dawson et al. (2019) asked teachers and students about what leads to the most effective feedback. The majority of teachers argued it was the design of the task that lead to better feedback and students argued it was the quality of the feedback provided to them in teacher comments that led to improvements in performance.

Brooks et al. (2019) investigated the prevalence of feedback relative to these three questions in upper elementary classrooms. They recorded and transcribed 12 h of classroom audio based on 1,125 grade five students from 13 primary schools in Queensland. The researchers designed a questionnaire to measure the usefulness of feedback aligned with the three feedback questions (“Where am I going?” “How am I going?” “Where to next?“) along with three of the four feedback levels (task, process, and self-regulation). Results indicated that of the three feedback questions, “How am I going?” (Feed-back) was by far the most prominent, accounting for 50% of total feedback words. This was followed by “Where am I going?” (Feed-up) (31%) and “Where to next?” (Feed-forward) (19%). When considering the focus of verbal feedback, 79% of the feedback was at the task level, 16% at process level, and <1% at the self level. The findings of such studies are significant in relation to the gap between literature and practice, which indicates that we need to know more about how effective feedback interventions are enacted in the classroom.

Mandouit (2020) developed a series of feedback questions from an intensive study of student conceptions of feedback. He found that students sought feedback as to how to “elaborate on ideas” and “how to improve.” They wanted feedback that would not only help them “next time” they complete a similar task in the future, but that would help them develop the ability to think critically and self-regulate moving forward. It is these transferable skills and understandings that students consider as important, but, as identified in this study, challenged teachers in practice as it was rarely offered. His student feedback model included four questions: Where have I done well? Where can I improve? How do I improve? What do I do next time?

One often suggested method of improving the nature of feedback is to administer it via computer-based systems. Earlier synthesis of this literature tended to focus on task or item-specific level and investigating the differences between knowledge of results (KR), knowledge of correct response (KCR), and elaborated feedback (EF). Van der Kleij, Feskens, and Eggen (2015) , for example, used 70 effects from 40 studies of item-based feedback in a computer-based environment on students’ learning outcomes. They showed that elaborated feedback (e.g., providing an explanation) produced larger effect-sizes (EF = 0.49) than feedback regarding the correctness of the answer (KR = 0.05) or providing the correct answer (KCR = 0.32). Azevedo and Bernard (1995) used 22 studies on the effects of feedback on learning from computer-based instruction with an overall effect of 0.80. Immediate feedback had an effect of 0.80 and delayed 0.35, but they did not relate their findings to specific feedback characteristics. Jaehnig and Miller (2007) used 33 studies and found elaborated feedback was more effective than KCR, and KCR was more effective than KR. The major message is the computer-delivered elaborated feedback has the largest effects.

The Turnitin Feedback Studio Model: Background and Existing Research

Turnitin Feedback Studio, one such computer-based system, is most known for its similarity checking, powered by a comprehensive database of academic, internet, and student content. Beyond that capability, however, Feedback Studio also offers functionality to support both effective and efficient options for grading and, most relevant to this study, providing feedback. Inside the system, the Feedback Studio model allows for multiple streams of feedback, depending on how instructors opt to utilize the system, with both automated options and teacher-generated options. The primary automated option is for grammar feedback, which automatically detects issues and provides guidance through an integration with the e-rater ® engine from ETS ( https://www.ets.org/erater ). Even this option allows for customization and additional guidance, as instructors are able to add elaborative comments to the automated feedback. Outside of the grammar feedback, the remaining capabilities are manual, in that instructors identify the instances requiring feedback and supply the specific feedback content. Within this structure, there are still multiple avenues for providing feedback, including inline comments, summary text or voice comments, and Turnitin’s trademarked QuickMarks ® . In each case, instructors determine what student content requires commenting and then develop the substance of the feedback.

As a vehicle for providing feedback on student writing, Turnitin Feedback Studio offers an environment in which the impact of feedback can be leveraged. Student perceptions about the kinds of feedback that most impact their learning align to findings from scholarly research ( Kluger and DeNis, 1996 ; Wisniewski et al., 2020 ). Periodically, Turnitin surveys students to gauge different aspects of the product. In studies conducted by Turnitin, student perceptions of feedback over time fall into similar patterns as in outside research. For example, a 2013 survey about students’ perceptions of the value, type, and timing of instructor feedback reported that 67% of students claimed receiving general, overall comments, but only 46% of those students rated the general comments as “very helpful.” Respondents from the same study rated feedback on thesis/development as the most valuable, but reported receiving more feedback on grammar/mechanics and composition/structure ( Turnitin, 2013 ). Turnitin (2013) suggests the disconnect between the receipt of general, overall comments compared to the perceived value provides further support that students value more specific feedback, such as comments on thesis/development.

Later, an exploratory survey examining over 2,000 students’ perceptions on instructor feedback asked students to rank the effectiveness of types of feedback. The survey found that the greatest percentage (76%) of students reported suggestions for improvement as “very” or “extremely effective.” Students also highly perceived feedback such as specific notes written in the margins (73%), use of examples (69%), and pointing out mistakes as effective (68%) ( Turnitin, 2014 ). Turnitin (2014) proposes, “The fact that the largest number of students consider suggestions for improvement to be “very” or “extremely effective” lends additional support to this assertion and also strongly suggests that students are looking at the feedback they receive as an extension of course or classroom instruction.”

Turnitin found similar results in a subsequent survey that asked students about the helpfulness of types of feedback. Students most strongly reported suggestions for improvement (83%) as helpful. Students also preferred specific notes (81%), identifying mistakes (74%), and use of examples (73%) as types of feedback. Meanwhile, the least helpful types of feedback reported by students were general comments (38%) and praise or discouragement (39%) ( Turnitin, 2015 ). As a result of this survey data, Turnitin (2015) proposed that “Students find specific feedback most helpful, incorporating suggestions for improvement and examples of what was done correctly or incorrectly.” The same 2015 survey found that students consider instructor feedback to be just as critical for their learning as doing homework, studying, and listening to lectures. From the 1,155 responses, a majority of students (78%) reported that receiving and using teacher feedback is “very” or “extremely important” for learning. Turnitin (2015) suggests that the results from the survey demonstrates that students consider feedback to be just as important to other core educational activities.

Turnitin’s own studies are not the only evidence of these trends in students’ perceptions of feedback. In a case study examining the effects of Turnitin’s products on writing in a multilingual language class, Sujee et al. (2015) found that the majority of the learners expressed that Turnitin’s personalized feedback and identification of errors met their learning needs. Students appreciated the individualized feedback and claimed a deeper engagement with the content. Students were also able to integrate language rules from the QuickMark drag-and-drop comments, further strengthening the applicability in a second language classroom ( Sujee et al., 2015 ). A 2015 study on perceptions of Turnitin’s online grading features reported that business students favored the level of personalization, timeliness, accessibility, and quantity and quality of receiving feedback in an electronic format ( Carruthers et al., 2015 ). Similarly, a 2014 study exploring the perceptions of healthcare students found that Turnitin’s online grading features enhanced timeliness and accessibility of feedback. In particular regard to the instructor feedback tools in Turnitin Feedback Studio (collectively referred to as GradeMark), students valued feedback that was more specific since instructors could add annotated comments next to students’ text. Students claimed it increased meaningfulness of feedback which further supports the GradeMark tools as a vehicle for instructors to provide quality feedback ( Watkins et al., 2014 ). In both studies, students expressed interest in using the online grading features more widely across other courses in their studies ( Watkins et al., 2014 ; Carruthers et al., 2015 ).

In addition to providing insight about students’ perception of what is most effective, Turnitin studies also surfaced issues that students sometimes encounter with feedback provided inside the system. Part of the 2015 study focused on how much students read, use, and understand feedback they receive. Turnitin (2015) reports that students most often read a higher percentage of feedback than they understand or apply. When asked about barriers to understanding feedback, students who claimed to understand a minimal amount of instructor feedback (13%) reported that most often/always the largest challenges were: comments had unclear connections to the student work or assignment goals (44.8%), feedback was too general (42.6%), and they received too many comments (31.8%) ( Turnitin, 2015 ). Receiving feedback that was too general was also considered a strong barrier for students who claimed to understand a moderate or large amount of feedback.

Research Questions

From studies investigating students’ conceptions of feedback, Mandouit (2020) found that while they appreciated feedback about “where they are going”, and “how they are going”, they saw feedback mainly in terms of helping them know where to go next in light of submitted work. Such “where to next” feedback was more likely to be enacted.

This study investigates a range of feedback forms, and in particular investigates the hypothesized claim that feedback that leads to “where to next” decisions and actions by students is most likely to enhance their performance. It uses Turnitin Feedback Studio to ask about the relation of various agents of feedback (teacher, machine program), and codes the feedback responses to identify which kinds of feedback are related to the growth and achievement from first to final submission of essays.

In order to examine the feedback that instructors have provided on student work, original student submissions and revision submissions, along with corresponding teacher- and machine intelligence-assigned feedback from Feedback Studio were compiled by the Turnitin team. All papers in the dataset were randomly selected using a postgreSQL random () function. A query was built around the initial criteria to fetch assignments and their associated rubrics. The initial criteria included the following: pairs of student original drafts and revision assignments where each instructor and each student was a member of one and only one pairing of assignments; assignments were chosen without date restrictions through random selection until the sample size (<3,000) had been satisfied; assignments were from both higher education and secondary education students; assignment pairs where the same rubric had been applied to both the original submission and the revision submission and students had received scores based on that rubric; any submissions with voice-recorded comments were excluded; and submissions and all feedback were written only in the English language. Throughout the data collection process, active measures were taken to exclude all personally identifiable information, including student name, school name, instructor name, and paper content, in accordance with Turnitin’s policies. The Chief Security Officer of Turnitin conducted a review of this approach prior to completion. After the dataset was returned, an additional column was added that assigned a random number to each data item. That random number column was then sorted and returned the final dataset of student submissions and resubmissions in random order, from which the final sample of student papers were identified for analysis.

The categories for investigation included country of student, higher education or high school setting, number of times the assignment was submitted, date and time of submission, details regarding the scoring of the assignment (like score, possible points, and scoring method), and details regarding feedback that was provided on the assignment (like mark type, page location of each mark, title of each mark, and comment text associated with each mark), and two outcome measures–achievement and growth from time 1 to time 2.

There were 3,204 students who submitted essays for feedback on at least two occasions. About half (56%) were from higher education and the other half (44%) from secondary schools. The majority (90%) were from the United States, and the others were from Australia (5.2%), Japan (1.5%), Korea (0.8%), India (0.5%), Egypt (0.5%), the Netherlands (0.4%), China (0.4%), Germany (0.3%), Chile (0.2%), Ecuador (0.2%), Philippines (0.2), and South Africa (0.03%). Within the United States, students spanned 13 states, with the majority coming from California (464), Texas (412), Illinois (401), New York (256), New Jersey (193), Washington (93), Wisconsin (91), Missouri (81), Colorado (67), and Kentucky (61).

In this study, pairs of student-submitted work—original drafts and revisions of those same assignments—along with the feedback that was added to each assignment, were examined. Student assignments were submitted to the Turnitin Feedback Studio system as part of real courses to which students submit their work via online, course-specific assignment inboxes. Upon submission, student work is reviewed by Turnitin’s machine intelligence for similarity to other published works on the Internet, submissions by other students, or additional content available within Turnitin’s extensive database. At this point in the process, instructors also have the opportunity to provide feedback and score student work with a rubric.

Feedback streams for student submissions in Turnitin Feedback Studio are multifaceted. At the highest level, holistic feedback can be provided in the Feedback Summary panel as a text comment. However, if instructors wish to embed feedback directly within student submissions, there are several options. First, the most prolific feature of Turnitin Feedback Studio is QuickMarks™, a set of reusable drag-and-drop comments derived from corresponding rubrics aligned to genre and skill-level criteria. Instructors may also choose to create their own QuickMarks and rubrics to save and reuse on future submissions. When instructors wish to craft personalized feedback not intended for reuse, they may leave a bubble comment, which appears in a similar manner to the reusable QuickMarks, or an inline comment that appears as a free-form text box they can place anywhere on the submission. Instructors also have access to a strikethrough tool to suggest that a student should delete the selected text. Automated grammar feedback can be enabled as an additional layer, offering the identification of grammar, usage, mechanics, style, and spelling errors. Instructors have the option to add an elaborative comment, including hyperlinks to instructional resources, to the automated grammar and mechanics feedback (delivered via e-rater®) and Turnitin QuickMarks. Finally, rubrics and grading tools are available to the teacher to complete the feedback and scoring process.

Within the prepared dataset, paired student assignments were presented for analysis. Work from each individual student was used only once, but appeared as a pair of assignments, comprising an original, “first draft” submission, and then a later “revision” submission of the same assignment by the same student. The first set of feedback thus can be considered formative, and the latter summative feedback. For each pair of assignments, the following information was reported: institution type, country, and state or province for each individual student’s work. Then, for both the original assignment submission and the revision assignment submission, the following information was reported: assignment ID, submission ID, number of times the assignment was submitted, date and time of submission, details regarding the scoring of the assignment (like score, possible points, and scoring method), and details regarding feedback that was provided on the assignment (like mark type, page location of each mark, title of each mark, and comment text associated with each mark). Prior to the analysis, definitions of all terms included within the dataset were created collaboratively and recorded in a glossary to ensure a common understanding of the vocabulary.

Some of the essays had various criteria scores (such as ideas, organization, evidence, style), but in this study only the total score was used. The assignments were marked out of differing totals so all were converted to percentages. On average, there were 19 days between submissions (SD = 18.4). Markers were invited by the Turnitin Feedback Studio processes to add comments to the essays and these were independently coded into various categories (see Table 1 ). One researcher was trained in applying the coding manual, and close checking was undertaken for the first 300 responses, leading to an inter-rater reliability in excess of 0.90, with all disagreements negotiated.

TABLE 1 . Codes and description of attributes coded for each essay.

There were two outcome measures. The first is the final score after the second submission, and the growth effect-size between the score after the first submission (where the feedback was provided) and the final score. The effect-size for each student was calculated using the formula for correlated or dependent samples.

A structural model was used to relate the feedback types with the final and growth effect-size. A multivariate analysis of variance investigates the nature of changes in means from the first to final scores, moderated by level of schooling (secondary, university). A regression was used to identify the source of feedback relative to the growth and final scores.

The average score at Time 1 was 71.34 (SD = 19.91) and at Time 2 was 82.97 (SD = 15.03). The overall effect-size was 0.70 (SD = 0.97) with a range from −2.26 to 4.97. The correlation between Time 1 and 2 scores was 0.60.

Figure 1 shows the number of students in each score range, and the average effect-size for that score range. Not surprising, the opportunity to improve (via the effect-size) is greater for those who scored lower in their essays at Time 1. There were between 1 and 139 total comments for the first submission essays with an average of 14 comments per essay ( Table 2 ). The most common comments related to Where to next–Specific (5.9), Needs support (4.5), Where to next–General (3.8), and Probes (2.3). The next set of common comments were about style such as references (2.0), Unclear comments (1.9), Grammar, punctuation, and spelling (1.7). There was about 1 praise comment per essay, and the other forms of feedback were more rare (Seek additional help (0.22), Uncodeable symbols (0.15), and Word count (0.10). The general message is that instructors were mostly focused on improvement, then on the style aspects of the essays.

FIGURE 1 . The number of students within each first submitted and final score range, and the average effect-size for that score range based on the first submission.

TABLE 2 . Range, mean, and standard deviation of feedback comments for first submission essay.

There are two related dependent variables–the relation between the comments and the Time 2 grade, and to the improvement between Time 1 and Time 2 (the growth effect-size). Clearly, there is a correlation between Time 2 and the effect-size (as can be seen in Figure 1 ) but it is sufficiently low ( r = 0.19) to warrant asking about the differential relations of the comments to these two outcomes.

A covariance analysis using SEM (Amos, Arbuckle, 2011 ) identified the statistically significant correlates of the Time 2 and growth effect-sizes. Using only these forms of feedback statistically significant, then a reduced model was run to optimally identify the weights of the best sub-set. The reduced model (chi-square = 18,466, df = 52) was statistically significantly better fit (chi-square = 19,686, df = 79; Δchi-square = 1,419, df = 27, p <. 001).

Thus, the best predictors of the growth improvement from Time 1 to Time 2 were the number of comments (the more comments given, the more likely the essay improved), and Specific and General Where to next comments ( Table 3 ). The best predictors of the overall Time 2 performance were Praise; and the comments that led to the lowest improvement included Praise, Probes, Grammar, Referencing, and Unclear comments. It is worth noting that Praise for a summative outcome is positive, but for formative is negative.

TABLE 3 . Standardized structural weights for the full and reduced covariance analyses for the feedback forms.

A closer investigation was undertaken to see if Praise indeed has a dilution effect. Each student’s first submission was coded as having no Praise and no Where-to-next ( N = 334), only Praise ( N = 416), only Where-to-next (N = 1,113), and Praise and Where-to-next feedback ( N = 1,434). When the first two sets were considered, the improvement was appreciably lower where there was Praise compared to no Praise and no Where-to-next (Mn = −0.21 vs. 0.40), and similar compared to Where-to-next and “Praise and Where-to-next” (Mn = 0.89 vs. 0.89).

There was an overall mean difference in the Time 1, Time 2, and growth effect-size relating to whether the student was at University or within a High School (Wilks Lambda = 0.965, Mult. F = 57.68, df = 2, 3,189, p < 0.001; Table 4 ). There were no differences between the mean scores at Time 1, but the University students made the greatest growth between Time 1 and Time 2, and thence in the final Time 2 grade. There were more comments for University students inviting students to seek additional help, and more Where to next comments. The instructors of University students gave more specific and general Where to next feedback comments (4.11, 6.55 vs. 3.30, 4.87) than did the instructors/markers of the secondary students. There were no differences in the number of words in the comments, Praise, the provision of general comments or not, uncodeable comments, and referencing.

TABLE 4 . Means, standard deviations, effect-sizes, and analysis of variance statistics of comparisons between University and Secondary students.

For University students, the highest correlates of the specific coded essay comments included Where to next, the number of comments, General and Specific Where to next, Need support, Seek additional help, the total number of comments, and negatively related to Praise ( Table 5 ). For secondary students, the highest correlates were Where to next, Need support, and negative to Praise.

TABLE 5 . Correlations between the forms of feedback for the university and secondary students.

There are five major forms of feedback provisions, and the most commonly used were e-rater ® (grammar), QuickMarks (drag-and-drop comments), and teacher-provided comments. There were relatively few inline (instructor brief comments), and strikethroughs ( Table 6 ). Across all essays, there were significant relations between teacher inline, QuickMarks, and strikethroughs with the growth impact over time. Perhaps not surprising, these same three correlated negatively with the performance at first submission as these had the greatest opportunity for teacher comments.

TABLE 6 . Means, standard deviations, and correlations between forms of feedback provision and first submission, final submission, and growth effect-sizes.

Feedback can be powerful but it is also most variable. Understanding this variability is critical for instructors who aim to improve their students’ proficiencies. There is so much advice about feedback sandwiches (including a positive comment, then specific feedback comment, then another positive comment), increasing the amount of feedback, the use of praise about effort, and debates about grades or comments, but these all ignore the more important issue about how any feedback is heard, understood, and actioned by students. There is also a proliferation of computer-aided tools to improve the giving of feedback, and with the inclusion of artificial intelligence engines, these are proffered as solutions to also reduce the time and investment by instructors in providing feedback. The question addressed in this study is whether the various forms of feedback is “heard and used by students” leading to improved performance.

As Mandouit (2020) argued, students prefer feedback that assists them to know where to learn next, and then how to attain this “where to next” status; although this appears to be a least frequent form of feedback ( Brooks et al., 2019 ). Others have found that more elaborate feedback produces greater gains in learning than feedback about the correctness of the answer, and this is even more likely to be the case when asked for essays rather than closed forms of answering (e.g., multiple choice).

The major finding was the importance of “where to next” feedback, which lead to the greatest gains from the first to the final submission. No matter whether more general or quite specific, this form of feedback seemed to be heard and actioned by the students. Other forms of feedback helped, but not to the same magnitude; although it is noted that the quantity of feedback (regardless of form) was of value to improve the essay over time.

Care is needed, however, as this “where to next” feedback may need to be scaffolded on feedback about “where they are going” and “how they are going,” and it is notable that these students were not provided with exemplars, worked examples, or scoring rubrics that may change the power of various forms of feedback, and indeed may reduce the power of more general forms of “where to next” feedback.

In most essays, teachers provided some praise feedback, and this had a negative effect on improvement, but a positive effect on the final submission. Praise involves a positive evaluation of a student’s person or effort, a positive commendation of worth, or an expression of approval or admiration. Students claim they like praise (Lipnevich, 2007), and it is often claimed praise is reinforcing such that it can increase the incidence of the praise behaviors and actions. In an early meta-analysis, however, Deci et al. (1999) showed that in all cases, the effects of praise were negative on increasing the desired behavior; task noncontingent–praise given from something other than engaging in the target activity (e.g., simply participating in the lesson) ( d = −0.14); task contingent–praise given for doing or completing the target activity ( d = −0.39); completion contingent–praise given specifically for performing the activity well, matching some standard of excellence, or surpassing some specific criterion ( d = −0.44); engagement contingent–praise dependent on engaging in the activity but not necessarily completing it ( d = −0.28). The message from this study is to reduce the use of praise-only feedback during the formative phase if you want the student to focus on the substantive feedback to then improve their writing. In a summative situation, however, there can be praise-only feedback, although more investigation is needed of such praise on subsequent activities in the class ( Skipper and Douglas, 2012 ).

The improvement was greater for university than high school students and this is probably because university instructors were more likely to provide where to next feedback and inviting students to seek additional help. It is not clear why high school teachers are less likely to offer “where to next” feedback, although it is noted they were more likely to request the student seek additional help. Both high school and college students do not seem to mind the source of the feedback, especially the timeliness, accessibility, and quantity of feedback provided by computer-based systems.

The strengths of the study include the large sample size and there was information from a first submission of an essay with formative feedback, then resubmission for summative feedback. The findings invite further study about the role of praise, the possible effects of combinations of forms of feedback (not explored in this study); a major message is the possibilities offered from computer-moderated feedback systems. These systems include both teacher- and automatic-generated feedback, but as important are the facilities and ease for instructors to add inline comments and drag-and-drop comments. The Turnitin Feedback Studio model does not yet provide artificial intelligence provision of “where to next” feedback, but this is well worth investigation and building. The use of a computer-aided system of feedback augmented with teacher-provided feedback does lead to enhanced performance over time.

This study demonstrates that students do appreciate and act upon “where to next” feedback that guides them to enhance their learning and performance, they do not seem to mind whether the feedback is from the teacher via a computer-based feedback tool, and were able, in light of the feedback, to decode and act on the feedback statements.

Data Availability Statement

The data analyzed in this study is subject to the following licenses/restrictions: The data for the study was drawn from Turnitin’s proprietary systems in the manner described in the from Data Availability Statement to anonymize user information and protect user privacy. Turnitin can provide the underlying data (without personal information) used for this study to parties with a qualified interest in inspecting it (for example, Frontiers editors and reviewers) subject to a non-disclosure agreement. Requests to access these datasets should be directed to Ian McCullough, [email protected] .

Author Contributions

JH is the first author and conducted the data analysis independent of the co-authors employed by Turnitin, which furnished the dataset. JC, KVG, PW-S, and KW provided information on instructor usage of the Turnitin Feedback Studio product and addressed specific questions of data interpretation that arose during the analysis.

Turnitin, LLC employs several of the coauthors, furnished the data for analysis of feedback content, and will cover the costs of the open access publication fees.

Conflict of Interest

JC, KVG, PW-S, and KW are employed by Turnitin, which provided the data for analysis.

The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We thank Ian McCullough, James I. Miller, and Doreen Kumar for their support and contributions to the set up and coding of this article.

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Wisniewski, B., Zierer, K., and Hattie, J. (2020). The Power of Feedback Revisited: A Meta Analysis of Educational Feedback Research. Front. Psychol. 10, 3087. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03087

Keywords: feedback, essay scoring, formative evaluation, summative evaluation, computer-generated scoring, instructional practice, instructional technologies, writing

Citation: Hattie J, Crivelli J, Van Gompel K, West-Smith P and Wike K (2021) Feedback That Leads to Improvement in Student Essays: Testing the Hypothesis that “Where to Next” Feedback is Most Powerful. Front. Educ. 6:645758. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.645758

Received: 23 December 2020; Accepted: 06 May 2021; Published: 28 May 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Hattie, Crivelli, Van Gompel, West-Smith and Wike. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Patti West-Smith, [email protected]

Feedback on your assignments: what it is and how to use it

This guide explains how to use your tutor's feedback so that you understand your grade and how to improve your academic performance..

• Understand your strengths and weaknesses

When you get your assignments back from your tutor, you will probably initially focus on the grade you have received.

However, your tutor will have given you useful and well thought-out feedback, with the purpose of a) helping you understand the grade and b) providing you with ideas for how to improve in future assignments. It is important that you make good use of this feedback to help you understand your strengths and weaknesses and what you need to do to improve on your grade.

There are three key things you need to do in order to maximise the usefulness of your tutor feedback:

• Understand the feedback : look at all the feedback provided (sometimes there are comments on your script as well as the overall comments), and read it carefully to ensure you understand each comment.
• Log your feedback : create a system of storing your feedback that is easily accessible.
• Use your feedback in future assignments : refer to your feedback in preparation for new assignments, and use it as a checklist.
• Understand the feedback

Tutors will have different ways of giving you feedback. Some will provide a written summary of your key strengths and weaknesses, and some will provide oral recorded feedback. You may also receive focused, itemised feedback on the script of your work.

Tutors will provide both positive and critical feedback. Generally, the positive feedback is easy to understand, but sometimes the critical feedback can be unclear or can use terminology that is not easy to understand. Some common critical comments are listed below with a glossary to explain what is meant, and suggestions for how to improve as a result of this feedback.

• Glossary of terms
• Log your feedback

Once you have read and understood the feedback you have received, it is important to create a system of storing it for future reference. This feedback is useful when preparing your next assignments, and you should find a system of storage that is easily accessible and works well for you.

Not everyone will like the same system. Here are a couple of examples of ways that students have stored their feedback to create an easy reference tool to use as a check list each time they start work on assignments.

Using a table

This method of logging and storing your feedback is commonly used. Here you create a table and cut and past feedback into the appropriate column. In addition, students often include a column for their grade, so that they can see which assignments are likely to have feedback that tells them not only what to improve, but also what to continue doing.

This is what it could look like as a student starts to fill it in:

Using a mind map

Another common way to log your feedback is by creating a mind map.

Use sections to group your feedback so that it is easily demarcated by comment-type. Mind maps work best with the key points from your feedback. It can be a useful review task to pull out the main issues raised by your tutor, and to summarise them using concise language.

Remember that you should choose a way to log your feedback that works best for you. It needs to be achievable and accessible to you, so that you can use it easily to review your tutors’ advice and learn from it.

• Use your feedback in future assignments

Once you have set up a system for collecting and storing your feedback, you have an important resource to help you improve on your work.

You need to revisit this feedback and review the comments frequently, in order to learn what your strengths and weaknesses are. You will start to identify themes, and this will help you to create a plan for how to improve.

For each new assignment, the following approach should help you to avoid making the same mistakes again, and allow you to consolidate the strengths you have.

• Summary and next steps
• Make sure you understand it and can see why your tutors are saying what they are saying.
• Create a storage system that suits you. Include your own reflection and ideas for what you need to do to improve.
• As you build up your feedback, start to collate it to show recurring themes and comments.
• Use your collated feedback as a guide and checklist when planning, preparing and reviewing your work.

Engaging with feedback resource

This short, interactive self-access resource shows you how to:

• use feedback as a powerful learning tool
• examine what might be preventing you from using feedback
• identify patterns in your feedback
• set goals and create a personal action plan.

If you have any questions, please contact us.

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Why Is Feedback Important in the Communication Process

Constructive feedback is essential in two-way communication, being a way to help colleagues learn and grow in their field inside the company. Its importance is also backed up by science: many studies have shown that the most efficient teams are those in which there is appreciative communication.

Feedback can be an excellent motivator for many team members to improve and engage more in the company's goals. But what are the strategies that help you provide truly constructive feedback? Read on to learn more about feedback in the communication process and its importance in the workplace.

What is feedback in communication?

Feedback in communication is the response, reaction, or information given by the recipient of a message to the sender. It is the process of letting someone know which areas they need to improve. 

Feedback is essential to effective communication because it helps the sender check that their message has been understood and received as intended and modify their communication strategy as needed.

Feedback is crucial in two-way communication to ensure both sides are on the same page and can prevent misunderstandings or confusion. It also strengthens the bonds of trust and rapport between the sender and the recipient.

Giving constructive feedback on communication is a crucial leadership trait. It enables you to support each team member in enhancing their capacity to interact with their colleagues, clients, stakeholders, and outside vendors and convey their requirements and concerns.

You can give feedback on communication orally or nonverbally, in writing, through written remarks, facial expressions, or body language. While negative feedback may be used to pinpoint areas for growth, positive feedback is frequently utilized to support and encourage effective communication.

Types of feedback in communication

There are several types of feedback in communication, each serving a specific purpose in the communication process. Here are some of the most common types of feedback:

• Formal feedback - many companies adopt this type of feedback for evaluating productivity in a given time. Its structure is simple and objective, giving both the managers and employees a chance to talk about what they can improve in their work and communication strategy;
• Evaluative feedback is a way to describe an individual's behavior and has beneficial results only when it's positive. This type of feedback is not always recommended because it can often be perceived as too personal; 
• Prescriptive feedback is a form of advice in which the recipient tells the sender how to correct their way of working. Although this type of feedback can be helpful in the early stages, such as training or onboarding, it can also be a way to avoid giving constructive feedback on the individual's work;
• Descriptive feedback -  as the name implies, this type of feedback is used to describe the effects of an individual's action, which leads to the presentation of a relevant opinion. Descriptive feedback is considered the best form of evaluation in the workplace and other fields, such as education and science. To be motivated, especially when working for someone else, team members need to feel appreciated, even when improvements need to be made. A proven way to provide good feedback is by combining the necessary recommendations with the quality of their work to conclude positively about the evaluated person.

Importance of feedback in communication

Feedback  is a tool that can help people evaluate themselves and their work and also how others perceive them. While employees and students need to receive feedback, it's also essential for leaders who believe in growth to ask for an evaluation, give an example, and be an inspiration for them.  

Most team members appreciate honest evaluation - approximately 70% of employees said they would work harder if their managers better appreciated their efforts.

Professional feedback will increase communication effects, whether you are a manager, team member, student, or colleague. Therefore, in the  feedback culture , evaluation should be used permanently, both professionally and personally. 

Here are some of the reasons why feedback is essential in communication:

✅  Confirmation of understanding.  In effective communication, people need to know that their message has been received and comprehended as intended. Without feedback, it's possible that the sender won't be aware that their communication has been misunderstood, which might cause confusion and blunders.

✅  Improves communication.  Feedback helps increase communication by informing the sender of what went well and what didn't.

✅  Develops trust.  Feedback delivered positively and encouragingly can aid in developing trust between the sender and recipient. Over time, this may result in closer ties and improved communication.

✅  Encourages positive behavior.  Providing constructive feedback can motivate the recipient to continue engaging in positive behaviors.

✅  Identifies areas for improvement.  Negative feedback can be used to identify areas for improvement. However, when given constructively and with the intention of helping the recipient learn and grow, this can lead to considerable changes in the caliber of communication.

Why is feedback important to the communication process in the workplace

The power of good feedback comes from the fact that it can change certain behaviors and allows the other person to receive a realistic perspective on his action. Therefore, feedback is constructive only when it focuses on an individual's work and actions.

For example, if you are a manager and want an employer to know what you think about a particular project, highlight the issues based on those tasks and nothing more. In other words, the feedback must be descriptive, not evaluative!

Feedback is essential in the workplace because:

It motivates and engages people

Recent  research  on work productivity showed that four in ten employees do not involve as much in the company's goals when not given regular feedback ( source ). The same study concluded that  43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week compared to only 18% of employees with low engagement.

So, managers must ensure that their team members will be evaluated correctly and regularly. This way, people feel valued and more motivated to do a good job.

It lowers employee turnover

While giving and receiving feedback is not always comfortable, research shows that employees expect to receive feedback from their managers and peers.  According to a recent study, companies that regularly solicit employee feedback experience a 14.9% reduction in employee turnover.

So, as a people leader, make things straightforward and provide ongoing, real-time feedback to your people if you want to keep them longer.

It improves efficiency

Feedback is not advice or criticism; sometimes, it can be interpreted as negative if it's not formulated properly. So, it's crucial to explain the importance of feedback in the communication process to the team members, so they can always be open to receiving it positively.

If consistent, descriptive feedback can help individuals work on their mistakes and find ways to be more efficient and productive.

It encourages active listening

Feedback sessions are just as crucial as transparent communication between team members. The participants must be honest and pay attention to the information they are getting. It's better to receive and offer face-to-face feedback because it allows the individual to ask questions where ideas need more details or clarifications.

Build a culture of feedback with Mirro

The value of feedback is undeniable, especially when it comes to efficient communication in the workplace. When feedback is objective, anchored in a clear context, and justified, the parties involved have the chance to learn more about each other's degree of communication, needs, and requirements.

When used properly, feedback can help people grow, improve, and see themselves in a different light, but it can also be a tool for companies to drive business growth and reach their goals.

With  Mirro , you can motivate your colleagues and team members by creating a feedback culture with advanced performance management software that is incredibly easy to use! 

Say goodbye to the rigidity of formal feedback sessions. Instead, our platform helps you effortlessly share and request feedback from colleagues, collaborators, and external people. Nobody will postpone giving feedback, as Mirro's request form is straightforward to fill in.

Contact our team of culture specialists  and choose the right plan for you!

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6 reasons why feedback is important

Criticism is an important part of our lives. Without criticism, we would never know right from wrong, and the good from the bad. All said, and done, however, it is not easy to take criticism, even when it is said in the best of intentions. Feedback, also called constructive criticism, is the reaction an action receives from its target group, which helps one decide whether the action was good or not, and how it can be improved. Of course, this is not an easy process; hearing one’s efforts did not produce the best results can be pretty hard to take. However, it is also extremely important to take criticism the right way and learn how to improve.

Why feedback is essential?

In this article, let us find out why feedback is important to us.

It helps us improve

Good criticism doesn’t simply tell us whether we are right or wrong; it shows us exactly where we went wrong, applauds our strengths, and provides helpful tips for improvement. For instance, let us say you create a story. Good criticism will tell you that the plot is good, but the execution could be better. It will provide examples of stories that you could read to get ideas on how to make the story more interesting. If you take the feedback in your stride and work on it, you will be better able to improve on your story-writing skills, and deliver a far more satisfactory piece.

It is a good motivator

Constructive criticism, if taken in the right spirit, is a great motivator. Feedback doesn’t just point out our flaws, it also tells us when and how we are doing something right. It would be impossible to carry on doing something when you have no idea whether you are doing it right or wrong. This applies everywhere- from your professional life, where feedback gives you the boost to do better, to your personal life, where feedback lets you know whether you are doing the right things to keep your relationships flourishing. In a nutshell, constructive criticism is what helps you stay on your toes and keep your life going on the right track.

It’s a parameter of your skills

When you get feedback, you know how you performed. You know that irrespective of what you thought at the time, your performance was either up to the mark, or you need to step up your game. If you keep making changes after the feedback, and the suggestions for improvement keep coming, you know that you are doing something gravely wrong, and that a change in the basics is necessary. On the other hand, if your product sells like hot cakes and leaves customers gushing, you know your efforts were spot on.

Boosts communication with customers

In the business world, feedback is a great way of communicating with customers. People who are buying the products want to voice their opinions, and it creates a good impression when the company makes changes in accordance to their customers’ concerns. Similarly, customer feedback is the best way of judging whether a product is doing well, and which sector of the population is most comfortable with the product.

It discourages stagnation

Every time you receive feedback on something, there is always some suggestion of improvement. And in order to make those improvements, you have to learn something new. For instance, if you are an actor and get rejected from a role because you cannot play the guitar, you must learn to play the guitar to bag a similar role the next time. Hence, you learn something new in the process, making you more qualified. Again, when a product keeps failing in the market with negative feedback, the company must think of something innovative to lure its customers in, something that is out of the box.

Boosts personal growth

Learning to deal with feedback is not an easy thing to do. When you believe you have put in your best, and the output does not meet with the desired reaction, it may be a hard hit. But feedback is important, and learning to deal with it is one of the biggest lessons of life. Besides, when we are faced with the requirement to improve our performance on receiving the criticism, we often need to learn new things, and hone our existing arsenal of skills. Criticism, thus, keeps alive the constant drive for self-improvement.

Feedback or constructive criticism is something that we all need in our lives in order to go on. It is only through criticism that we learn to grow and improve, and bring about necessary change. It is important to embrace criticism in every aspect of our lives- be it personal or professional.

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CUET UG Exam Analysis 2024, May 17: Check Detailed Paper Review, Difficulty Level, and Good Attempts

img src="https://img.jagranjosh.com/images/2024/May/1652024/Add-a-heading-(14).jpg" width="1200" height="675" />

CUET Exam Analysis May 17, 2024: The National Testing Agency is conducting the CUET UG 2024 Exam all across India today i.e., May 17. The exam was conducted in 4 shifts for different papers, viz., Geography, Physical Education, Business Studies, and Accountancy, in pen and paper mode. The CUET exam holds significant importance for students aiming to secure admission to graduate programs in numerous central and state universities nationwide.

CUET UG Question Paper 2024, May 16

CUET Exam Analysis 2024, May 16

CUET UG Answer Key May 16, 2024

CUET UG Question Paper 2024, May 17

CUET UG Answer Key May 17, 2024

CUET UG Question Paper 2024, May 18

CUET Exam Analysis 2024, May 18

CUET UG Answer Key May 18, 2024

In this article, we will discuss the CUET May 17 exam analysis to check out the difficulty level of the exam and good attempts in the examination. Additionally, students can also check below the links to download the CUET UG 2024 question paper and CUET UG 2024 answer key. 

Test your preparation for CUET with this Free Mock Test

CUET Exam Analysis, May 17, 2024

The CUET UG 2024 analysis will encompass evaluations of both the overall difficulty level of the exam as well as its subject-specific challenges. This analysis will draw upon candidates' feedback and insights from leading coaching institutes regarding their responses and perceptions of the exam papers for Geography, Physical Education, Business Studies, and Accountancy.

CUET Exam Analysis May 17, 2024: Subject Wise Difficulty Level

Here, the candidates will get the paper-wise analysis of the CUET 2024 Exam held on May 17, 2024, in all the shifts. The paper review is based on student reactions and expert insights will help the candidates to understand the difficulty level of the papers.

CUET Exam Analysis 2024: Geography

In the Geography examination, a candidate needs to attempt 40 questions out of 50 questions asked in the examination. As per the initial response, Some students found the paper was relatively difficult as compared to the previous year. The overall difficulty level of the paper was moderate. Check the table below for the topics and difficulty level that were asked in the CUET Geography examination

CUET Exam Analysis 2024: Physical Education

In the Physical Education examination, a candidate needs to attempt 40 questions out of 50 questions asked in the examination. Check the table below for the topics and difficulty levels that were asked in CUET Physical Education examination

CUET Exam Analysis 2024: Business Studies

In the Business Studies examination, a candidate needs to attempt 40 questions out of 50 questions asked in the examination. Check the table below for the topics and difficulty level that were asked in the CUET Business Studies examination

CUET Exam Analysis 2024: Accountancy

In the Accountancy examination, a candidate needs to attempt 40 questions out of 50 questions asked in the examination. Check the table below for the topics and difficulty level that were asked in the CUET Accountancy examination