Formulating effective feedback

As a new teacher, it takes some time to figure out: how do you give good, effective feedback? You consult colleagues. Maybe someone tells you: don’t be too negative, students will clam up. Another colleague tells you that she learned not to be too positive, because it made students stop working and start getting lower grades. Yet another mentions that students are very happy with feedback if you also give them advice for improvement. So what advice should you follow?

Earlier we wrote about feedback, a process that requires something from both teachers and students. Zooming in further on the feedback process, tips on how to formulate feedback are often sought. Maybe you are looking for a ready-made recipe for well-formulated comments, in which it is clear to the student what is meant, the student appreciates the feedback and the feedback can then be used without any problems. Spoiler alert: we don’t have a ready-made solution. We can, however, tell you what to think about when trying to formulating effective feedback.

Tips for effective feedback

Research on well-formulated feedback gives very different results depending on the context in which the comment is made. This also means that there are no concrete feedback phrases that can be applied by everyone, but mainly guidelines. We have four tips.

1. Formulate feedback in such a way that a student can do something with it¹

‘Well done’ or ‘below the bar’ says little about what is good or not good. What exactly are you talking about, and what was done so well? Explain, give examples, and steer in the right direction for a next step. The more concrete you are, the better the student understands your feedback and can actually use it¹,². Still, you can vary in how exactly you become concrete. If, for instance, the feedback is about something the student can or should already be able to do, you can also provide feedback as a question. This way, you promote reflection and thinking for yourself.

If you want to formulate feedback so that a student can do something with it, you also focus the feedback on the quality of the work or the execution of the work, not on the person³. Feedback like ‘you are a talented writer!’ says nothing about the performance that has been achieved. Even if it is well-intentioned, it does not provide the student with information with which to do something.

2. Note constructive wording ¹,²

If comments come across as too harsh, they will get in the way of student learning. A common mnemonic for formulating feedback is the ‘feedback sandwich’ with an improvement point wrapped between two positive comments. Researchers do not yet agree whether this method actually works⁴. It is not clear whether the order followed in the sandwich is actually the best way to give feedback. For example, starting with an improvement point followed by positive comments also seems to work⁴. In addition, opponents mention that the sandwich can feel artificial for students. So frenetically sticking to the sandwich does not immediately seem necessary, but students do benefit from a combination of points of improvement and positive points in their feedback⁵.

Constructive wording also means that you should preferably formulate feedback from an I perspective. With formulations like ‘you still need to work on…’, you step away from describing what you see and the feedback already seems more likely to be about the person rather than the task.

So, instead of…

The text is unclear. Improve the line of argument.

You can say, for example…

I still can’t follow what argument you’re making because you move from topic X to topic Y without clear transitional sentences and introduction. I have highlighted an example in the text. How could you rewrite this piece of text to make the line of argument clearer?

3. Be careful not to give too much feedback

Cognitive learning theory states that working memory is limited and we can only process a certain amount of information at a time. Providing an excessive amount of feedback may mean that the feedback simply cannot be processed by a student.

There are several strategies to reduce the amount of feedback. For example, is there a positive or improvement point that occurs more often in the work? Then mention that point once and indicate, for example, that the student should look up where this point occurs more often.

4. Consider an active role for students

Even if you try so hard to formulate feedback well, students will not always understand what you mean. After all, you are the expert, and what may make perfect sense to you may not always make sense to a student. Therefore, make sure students have the opportunity to ask questions about their received feedback. Feedback works best in dialogue⁶.

You can think further about the feedback you give: is it always necessary that it comes from you and is initiated by you? Perhaps peer feedback also works very well, or a student can already generate a lot of feedback themselves by assessing their own work once. Students can also ask for feedback instead of passively receiving it from someone. If you want to know more about the different ways you can use feedback, read our blog on feedback.

Using examples to formulate good feedback

After these tips, do you still doubt the wording of feedback in your context? Then present examples of feedback to your students and ask how they interpret it. Does it come across as you think or want it to? What ambiguities are there? Can students work with it? If you do this together with students, it is also a good way for them to learn how to give peer feedback. In this way, you can create together a list of key points for formulating feedback tailored to your own context.

One way you can easily rank feedback for quality is by assessing it comparatively. Ask students to compare different feedback points (perhaps on the same part of the assignment) with each other. Doing this in Comproved will create a ranking based on all comparisons that will immediately make it clear to everyone what constitutes good feedback. Want to know more? Read more here.

Literature

¹Henderson, M., Phillips, M., Ryan, M., Boud, D., Dawson, P., Molloy, E., & Mahoney, P. (2019). Conditions that enable effective feedback. Higher Education Research & Development, 38(7), 1401-1416. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1657807. 

²Prins, F. J., Sluijsmans, D. M. A., & Kirschner, P. A. (2006). Feedback for general practitioners in training: Quality, styles and preferences. Advances in health sciences education, 11, 289-303. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-005-3250-z  

³Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of educational research, 77(1), 81-112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487.  

⁴Prochazka, J., Ovcari, M., & Durinik, M. (2020). Sandwich feedback: the empirical evidence of its effectiveness. Learning and motivation, 71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lmot.2020.101649 

⁵Faulconer, E., Griffith, J., & Gruss, A. (2022). The impact of positive feedback on student outcomes and perceptions. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 47(2), 259-268. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.1910140 

⁶Ajjawi, R. & Boud, D. (2018). Examining the nature and effects of feedback dialogue. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(7), 1106-1119. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1434128