Providing Feedback
- Sharon Kearney
- Nyaradzai Changamire
- Sadaf Rathod
- Marcie Savoie (Unlicensed)
Providing Feedback
LEARN: What and Why
In conjunction with deciding which formative and summative assessments will be used in a course, one must decide how and how often to provide feedback to students. Providing students with feedback—written, verbal, video, etc. comments and guidance about their work and progress in the course—is a critical aspect of the learning process (Nicol et al., 2014).
Feedback not only helps students improve their performance in the course and meet learning objectives, but it also helps them feel engaged in the course and build connections with the instructor and their peers (Fiock & Garcia, 2019). In other words, feedback can also help build teaching and social presence (Garrison et al., 2000) in an online class.
There are a number of ways of providing feedback, and regardless of whether its formative or summative, it should ultimately be a learning experience for students. Another way to conceptualize feedback is as an opportunity to engage students in dialogue about their learning progress (Nicol & MacFarlane-Dick, 2007; Nash & Winstone, 2018). The dialogue about students’ progress does not have to exist solely between the teacher and student; rather, instructors can and should give students opportunities to evaluate their own work and progress and their peers through peer review processes (Nicol et al., 2014).
ENGAGE: How to do it
Principles for providing feedback in online courses
(adapted from Fiock & Garcia, 2019 and Nicol et al., 2014)
Be specific in the guidance
- Don’t just identify mistakes, but rather make clear recommendations for how to improve the work
Balance improvement and achievement comments
- Take the time to highlight what students – in addition to where improvements are needed; affirming their successes helps boost confidence and engagement with the course, instructor, and materials
Respond to work in a timely and frequent fashion
- Aim to respond to students work as quickly as possible, ideally 2-15 days; after that, students have moved on to other things and feedback is much less useful
- A good ballpark for frequency of feedback (or instructor-student interaction, such as: comments in a discussion board, mini-quizzes, responses to journals, etc.) is 1/week in an online course
Give opportunities for students to do something with the feedback
In order to learn and develop from the provided guidance, students need an opportunity to engage with it—to discuss it, analyze it, ask questions about it and integrate it with existing knowledge
In other words: they must have opportunities to construct their own meaning from the received message” (Nicol et al., 2014, p.103)
APPLY to your course
There are several approaches and technologies that can be used to give students feedback about their progress. It is recommended that, in order to maximize feedback, instructors create opportunities for students to give and receive feedback in all of the following scenarios:
- Instructor—Individual Student
- Peer-to-peer
- Student—self
- Instructor—small group
Approach | Description & Resources | UMass-supported tech tools |
Rubrics | · Predefined criteria for success and points allotted for different categories of the assignment. · Guide for Designing Grading Rubrics (Brown) | · Use Canvas rubrics to build and grade an assignment within the LMS · Upload your own rubric as an attachment in the LMS |
Peer Review | · Students evaluate each other’s work; expectation guidelines and rubrics are useful in this process. · Tips for conducting peer review in online course (Brown) and Nicol et al.’s (2014) article on Peer Review | · Use the peer review feature in Canvas Assignments or Canvas Discussions or Turnitin to conduct peer review |
Written Annotations | · Written comments are made directly on students’ work: use the LMS features to directly comment, add/strikethrough/highlight text, etc. · See Dawson et al.’s (2019) article on Effective Feedback | |
Verbal Audio Feedback | Recorded audio feedback on an assignment (this can often ultimately be both time-saving and clearer than written feedback for students) | · Use Canvas SpeedGrader to provide verbal audio feedback. |
Video Feedback and Screencasting | Recorded video of the person providing feedback and/or a video of what’s on the screen (this could be helpful for specificity on an assignment, as one can show where improvements are needed and what was done well) | · Use any screen recording platform on your computer or Zoom or Echo360 |
Video Conferencing | Students are given feedback through video conferencing format (scheduled or during office hours) | |
Reflection | Students evaluate their own work and progress using guided questions, the assignment rubric, etc. | Canvas Discussions/Pages |
To view several of these approaches, along with some benefits, recommendations, and additional resources in infographic form, visit The University of Survey’s Feedback in Online Learning INFOGRAPHIC.
References & Resources
Brown University’s Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. Designing Grading Rubrics.
Brown University’s Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. Peer Assessment in Online Courses.
Dawson, P., Henderson, M., Mahoney, P., Phillips, M., Ryan, T., Boud, D., & Molloy, E. (2019). What makes for effective feedback: Staff and student perspectives. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(1), 25-36.
Fiock, H. & Garcia, H. (2019, November 11). How to Give Your Students Better Feedback With Technology. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T, & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2, 87–105.
Nash & Winstone. (2018, March 14). When feedback is forgettable. The Learning Scientists.
Nicol, D., Thomson, A., & Breslin, C. (2014). Rethinking feedback practices in higher education: a peer review perspective. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(1), 102-122.
Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane‐Dick, D. (2007). Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in higher education, 31(2), 199-218.
The University of Survey. 2020. Feedback in Online Learning.