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24 Ways to Provide Effective Feedback for Learning

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Studies have shown that positive feedback can encourage a student’s achievement along with his/her efforts.Here are 24 ways to provide feedback for learning

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How might teachers provide feedback to support the cognitive, behavioural and motivational aspects of self-regulation?

"There is a large body of empirical evidence which shows that learners who are more self-regulated are more effective learners, are more persistent, resourceful, confident and higher achievers." (Pintrich, 1995; Zimmerman and Schunk, 2001)

As cited in my book, Mark Plan Teach, the research on formative assessment and feedback can help students take control of their own learning. According to Nicol and MacFarlane-Dick (2007), their research on formative assessment and self‐regulated learning offers a model and seven principles of good feedback practice. You can watch me discuss a short summary of the research and find the 7 principles explained below.

Stage 1: Clarify what good performance is

Students can only achieve learning goals if they understand those goals, assume some ownership of them, and can assess progress (Sadler, 1989; Black & Wiliam, 1998). If students do not share (at least in part) their teacher's conceptions of assessment goals (and criteria and standards) then the feedback information they receive is unlikely to 'connect' (Hounsell, 1997). One way of clarifying task requirements (goals/criteria/standards) is to provide students with written documents. However, many studies have shown that it is difficult to make assessment explicit, therefore, strategies must include verbal explanations.

Stage 2: Facilitate self-assessment

One effective way to develop self-regulation in students is to provide them with opportunities to practise regulating aspects of their own learning and to reflect on that practice. In order to build [engagement], and to develop systematically the learner's capacity for self-regulation, teachers need to create more structured opportunities for self-monitoring and the judging of progression to goals. In developing self-assessment skills it is important to engage students in identifying standards/criteria that will apply to their work and in making judgements about how their work relates to these standards (Boud, 1986)

Stage 3: Deliver high-quality feedback information

While research shows that teachers have a central role in developing their students' capacity for self-regulation, they are also a crucial source of external feedback. Moreover, teachers are much more effective in identifying misconceptions in students' work than the students themselves. Further strategies include: (i) making sure that feedback is provided in relation to pre-defined criteria; (ii) providing timely feedback; (iii) providing corrective advice; (iv) limiting the amount of feedback so that it is actually used; (v) prioritising areas for improvement; (vi) providing online tests so that feedback can be accessed anytime.

Stage 4: Encourage teacher and peer dialogue

For external feedback to be effective it must be understood and internalised by the student before it can be used to make productive improvements. One way of increasing the effectiveness of external feedback is to conceptualise feedback more as dialogue rather than as information transmission. Unfortunately, with large class sizes it can be difficult for a teacher to engage in dialogue with students. Nonetheless, teachers can increase feedback dialogue even in these situations. One approach is to structure small group break-out discussions or offer 'show me whiteboards' or thumbs up/down.

Stage 5: Encourage positive motivation and self-esteem

Motivation and self-esteem play a very important role in learning and assessment. Frequent high stakes assessment (where marks or grades are given) has a 'negative impact on motivation for learning that [hinders] lifelong learning' (Harlen & Crick, 2003). Studies on motivation and self-esteem are important - they help explain why students often fail to self-regulate. In terms of teaching practice, they suggest that motivation and self-esteem are more likely to be enhanced when a curriculum has many low-stakes assessment tasks, with feedback geared to providing information about progress and achievement.

Stage 6: Provide opportunities to close the gap

Probably the hardest of all stages to achieve is for teachers to close the gap once they have identified what is required. External feedback provides an opportunity to close a gap between current performance and the performance expected. First, closing the gap is about supporting students while engaged in the act of production of a piece of work (e.g. essays, presentations). Second, it is about providing opportunities to repeat the same 'task-performance-external feedback cycle' by, for example, allowing resubmission. The act of production requires intrinsic feedback that students can use whilst engaged in a task.

The following are some specific strategies to help students:

1. provide feedback on work in progress and increase opportunities for resubmission;

2. introduce two-stage assignments where feedback on stage one helps improve stage two (Gibbs, 2004);

3. teachers model the strategies they would;

4. provide some 'action points' alongside the normal feedback;

5. involve students in groups in identifying their own action points

Stage 7: Use feedback to improve teaching

Good feedback practice is not only about providing accessible and usable information that helps students improve their learning, but it is also about providing good information to teachers. In order to produce feedback that is relevant and informative and meets students' needs, teachers themselves need good data about how students are progressing. Frequent assessment tasks, especially diagnostic tests, can help teachers generate cumulative information about students' levels of understanding and skill so that they can adapt their teaching accordingly.

Conclusions

The research suggests that while students have been given more responsibility for learning in recent years there has been far greater reluctance to give them increased responsibility for assessment processes (even low stakes formative processes). Fifteen years on, this has clearly changed. There is much we can still take away from this research paper which reminds us of the importance of creating a feedback-loop in class so that students can self-regulate their decisions in and out of the class. All I have done is read the paper and quote the parts which I thought you would find most helpful. Now it is up to you...

Students (n = 128) who received verbal feedback perceived it to be better, of higher quality and more useful than students who received written feedback... no impact was found on students' perception, self-efficacy or motivation (Hopfenbeck, 2020).

Sources:

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7 Good Feedback Principles All Teachers Should Use by @TeacherToolkit >

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How might teachers provide feedback to support the cognitive, behavioural and motivational aspects of self-regulation? "There is a large body of empirical evidence which shows that learners who are more self-regulated are more effective learners, are more persistent, resourceful, confident and higher achievers."

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Student Feedback: Effective Strategies & Tips

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John Hattie Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

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UQx Deep Learning through Transformative Pedagogy

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LEARN079 What constitutes effective feedback

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UQx Deep Learning through Transformative Pedagogy

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UQx LEARNx Deep Learning through Transformative Pedagogy

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UQx LEARNx Deep Learning through Transformative Pedagogy

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Teachers often give high school students feedback to guide their learning-soliciting feedback about the class from them helps deepen the teacher-student rapport.

The seismic, traumatic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on education continue to haunt our students. Every teacher knows that developing student-teacher relationships is an urgent priority, and feedback, in particular, has taken on particular importance.

Engaging gallery walks in the classroom or hallway provide valuable feedback from teachers and peers, and traditional red-ink editorial comments on paper or electronic commentary on Google Docs are all popular and essential forms of feedback that we-especially high school English teachers like me-use all the time.

Since writing, however, is such a personal endeavor, an act of individual creativity, students often feel vulnerable in the face of the traditional methods of feedback from teachers, which, at times, can feel detached or impersonal. A more intimate approach puts students at ease in a way that editorial marks on paper or electronic comments don't. My personal preferred method of providing feedback is during one-on-one student-teacher conferences, but my conferences don't focus solely on teacher-delivered feedback, which is often a one-way street.

A More Effective Type of Feedback

I use feedback loops for student-teacher conferences, which, in contrast, are a two-way street-forging promising paths toward trust and open communication. Instead of teachers being the sole providers of feedback, in a feedback loop students offer their own feedback to their teachers on issues like reading selections, clarifying questions, direct instruction, class environment, or any other concerns a student may have that impact their learning. When teachers implement feedback loops early in the school year, they create a nurturing and supportive classroom environment and bolster rapport and comfort with students through an open and honest 360-degree, mutual exchange.

Teacher and blogger Taylor Meredith, detailing the value that feedback loops bring to her own instruction, writes, "As a teacher, my instruction is informed through these feedback loops. Listening to these loops tells me if I need to revisit a certain aim or set my expectations higher." Finding the time to schedule feedback loops creates, as Meredith describes, a "culture of feedback" in our classrooms.

In my own classroom, feedback loops are essential in developing the writing skills of my students and adapting or modifying my own instruction based on student feedback. For instance, I love when students tell me what I need to review, remediate, or clarify regarding my instruction. Further, I encourage my students to provide commentary on my reading selections. I like to know that a particular student prefers poetry over prose, literary nonfiction over novels or short stories, projects over papers. This feedback allows me to reflect on my curriculum through a lens of honesty and humility.

Feedback from my students spurs responsive self-reflection. And this is the central tenet of a feedback loop: It benefits both the student and the teacher in bolstering open communication and improving instruction. The strategy encourages a sense of safety, too, so that if any issue arises in the future, a student will feel comfortable approaching a trusted teacher. Students receive feedback and, in turn, take the lead expressing personal voice and choice. It takes less than 2 minutes per student to build a rapport that's so vital, especially in our current educational climate.

Making Time for Mutual Feedback

One-on-one conferences are extremely difficult to schedule, though, and demand careful strategizing on the teacher's part. Yet these conferences are vital and invaluable. So, in light of our tight schedules, what's the best way to implement feedback loops? There are a few options.

Teachers can meet with students for a private, one-on-one, conference during class while other students complete a collaborative assignment or project, assessment, or essay. In my own classroom, I place two chairs outside the door for myself and the student. With this setup, I can converse with the student privately while also monitoring the classroom. Teachers can meet with students during special lunch meetings. School administrators can set aside time during the school day during a directed study or study hall.

The dream scenario would be for schools to schedule student-teacher conferences during a professional development day. This way, students could meet with their teachers in round robin-type individual sessions without impacting the school day. Other options could include scheduling conferences during an allocated half-day or, if the teacher is willing, after school. Without a doubt, conferences after school pose a challenge for busy teachers already faced with enormous time constraints on a daily basis.

A student-teacher relationship built upon open communication, mutual trust and respect, and polite discourse

Student learning that encourages personal voice and self-advocacy, essential skills for life after high school

A reflective experience for teachers to modify and improve direct instruction, lesson planning, and curriculum creation

Student-teacher conferences should be on par with parent-teacher conferences and should warrant the same priority, the same urgency; modeling them after parent-teacher conferences would be an ideal avenue. Although they pose a scheduling challenge, feedback loops in student-teacher conferences lay the foundation for the following:

Regardless of content area or class size, I highly encourage all teachers to implement feedback loops into their student-teacher conferences. The potential dividends could yield rich rewards for students, teachers, and schools across the country.

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Teachers often give high school students feedback to guide their learning-soliciting feedback about the class from them helps deepen the teacher-student rapport.

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A process that integrates peer and teacher feedback with periods of revision drives deeper learning for middle and high school students.

Feedback has the potential to have a powerful effect on student learning, and this year, with estimated student learning loss of four to five months for math and reading respectively, that impact will be more important than ever. In his meta-analysis of feedback studies, John Hattie emphasizes that it's not how much feedback is given that matters-the feedback must be successfully received, processed, and applied. For students to benefit from feedback, they must have the opportunity to act on it.

Here's a feedback scenario that plays out far too frequently: Students glance at their assignments, see the grade, and discard the work in the recycling bin, completely disregarding all the feedback I have dutifully written. Or they check the online grade portal without even looking at the feedback I annotated on their digital submissions.

James Nottingham, an education leader based in the United Kingdom, says there are seven steps to effective feedback. I've adapted his seven steps and added an eighth step that will lead to deeper learning while making teaching simpler and more rewarding. I've also created a brief video summary.

An 8-Step Process for Giving Effective Feedback

1. Know the target: Particularly for major assignments, teachers and students must be clear about the goals. Students need to know what success will look like through examples and well-defined parameters, and one of the best ways to do this is to generate shared goals. For middle and high school students, this might be a cocreated rubric or a cogenerated range of optional assignments that meet clear criteria for success.

2. Develop the first final draft: This is not a rough draft. It's the best version that students can put together on their first attempt. Teachers or peers can't give meaningful feedback if students don't provide the best version of what they can do on their own. Garbage effort = garbage feedback. I remind students that they're wasting each other's time if they're sharing poor quality work when asking for peer feedback in Step 3.

3. Check the target: Using clear parameters, the student or the student and peers should review the first final draft. This is the step where many things can go wrong. Students need to focus on shared goals and good examples. If we don't provide clear parameters, peer feedback becomes pooled ignorance. For example, when giving feedback on others' writing, students need to look for no more than one to two points with each reading. They can check for vivid language, student voice, certain grammar rules, or particular content elements-but not all of these at the same time, particularly if they lack expertise.

One simple and slightly cheesy way I addressed peer ability was to develop peer editors among my fifth graders who had demonstrated competence in writing through a series of writing and grammar exercises. When they achieved a certain level of proficiency, they received "golden dictionaries" (cheap pocket dictionaries that were spray-painted gold) that they put on their desks during the revision step to let other students know they were available for peer review.

4. Improve: This step allows students to use feedback to make meaningful progress. They're no longer ignoring assessments and just looking for a grade-they're improving their work. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 as many times as necessary to improve the work.

5. Teacher checks the target: This is when I give feedback, and it's my favorite part of the process. By this time, the work is so much better than it would have been earlier. My life is already so much easier, and more important, students' work is so much better, because learning has improved, based on feedback.

When I started teaching, I worked myself into the ground trying to give feedback on initial drafts. Eventually, I saw the benefit of giving that work to my students. At this step, it's still critical to focus feedback on the rubric or criteria for success. I'm not trying to fix everything. I'm giving students feedback so they'll improve. This should be in the form of genuine feedback, not advice. Grant Wiggins makes the claim that much of what teachers give as feedback is advice that's unclear and not actionable. Instead of advice, ask questions like "Why did you choose to do this?" "What more can you tell me about this?" or "How does this idea fit with your earlier ideas?" The student is responsible for making the improvement, not mindlessly accepting our revisions.

6. Improve again: Students use my feedback to take their work to a higher level. For those of us who've seen our feedback in the recycling bin, this is a rewarding step.

7. Grade: This isn't about grade inflation. The purpose is to evaluate what students have accomplished after getting meaningful feedback. Students should meet our shared targets, and if not, there's plenty of evidence of the meaningful support they've received along the way.

8. Reflect: Teachers and students should return to the assignment target through the rubric or other criteria for success to celebrate the growth they've seen and make a plan for where they're going next. For example, at the end of a project, we might ask our students, "How are you thinking differently than you were at the beginning of this project?" "Given what you now know, if you were king/queen of the classroom, what would we do next?"

The more we make learning the reward for learning, the more likely we are to create conditions where intrinsic motivation flourishes. This type of work with feedback will result in deeper learning, less shallow coverage of content, and more meaningful growth for teachers and students.

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8 Steps to Making Feedback More Effective

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A process that integrates peer and teacher feedback with periods of revision drives deeper learning for middle and high school students.

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When high school students assess each other's work, they have an authentic audience and may be more likely to act on suggestions.

It can be hard as a high school English teacher to stay on top of grading all the writing, reading, and speaking I ask my students to do, and yet I know the value of timely and meaningful feedback. Last year I realized that the feedback doesn't always need to come from me-it can also be meaningful (even more meaningful for teenagers) when it comes from classmates.

Besides relieving me of some of the pressure, creating a classroom culture where students give each other feedback has helped me increase engagement and build community. Students better internalize rubric criteria and often act on suggestions from their peers. Their work becomes more relevant because they know they have an authentic audience. In addition, having more frequent interactions among students builds rapport and trust and disrupts the idea that I'm the only expert in the room.

Here's how I solicit peer feedback at various points in the assessment process.

Soliciting Peer Feedback for Formative Assessments

At the beginning of the writing/design process: Pitches on Flipgrid. During the brainstorming stages of a personal narrative assignment, I ask my students to pitch their idea by creating a short video on Flipgrid. They provide a working title and brief synopsis of the beginning, middle, and end of their story. Then they watch and respond to the pitches of two classmates. My colleagues and I model both the pitch and the response steps with videos of our own and give written instructions to provide sentence starters for their feedback.

In your response, you can include the following:

Questions about parts that were unclear (I didn't get the part about...)

Questions out of genuine curiosity (What happened next? Why were you...? What if you tried to...?)

Connections (Something similar happened to me when...)

Reactions (I love the part when... I could really imagine when you said... Something was missing when... I wanted to know more about...)

The results can be really exciting. Students ask each other questions, make connections to their own experiences and cultures, and give suggestions that their peers end up using in their written drafts. Sometimes they even say unexpectedly encouraging things like "I can't wait to read it!"

During collaborative activities: Rate and recognize routines. After group activities such as book club meetings, I ask each student to individually rate their group's collaboration using a four-point scale. Then they complete the sentence "Shout-out to... for...." I share the shout-outs (but not the numerical ratings) the next day with the whole class.

The four-point rating allows me to get a quick sense of how the group feels about their experience. If the whole group seems frustrated and rates themselves at two or one, I intervene to talk through the group dynamics. More often than not, however, the shout-outs from their peers are enough to alleviate the need for teacher intervention. Shout-outs help us focus on the positive and give students concrete examples of what good collaboration looks like and what their peers appreciate:

Morgan did a fantastic job at finding reliable sources that contributed to our claims.

Shout-out to Sadie for being efficient with making the group copy.

Shout-out to Jalani for participating in our group discussion today and asking questions.

Soliciting Peer Feedback for Summative Assessments

After a Socratic seminar or graded discussion: Reflect using Google Forms. Asking students to reflect after a graded discussion is part of my regular practice, and I used to ask them to focus only on their own performance. Last year, I added two questions that focus on others:

Give a specific example of something someone else said during this discussion that resonated with you. Explain why it stuck with you.

Who in your Socratic circle would you like to recognize and for what?

Their responses provided insight into the moments of a Socratic seminar that I may have missed. For example, one student asked the most profound questions but shared with me in her evaluation that she felt awkward that nobody really tried to answer them. Nevertheless, her name and ideas showed up in everyone's answer about what resonated with them. Because of the peer feedback component, I was able to assure her that she had planted a lot of seeds that day and back it up by showing her the comments from her peers.

Using Google Forms allows me to convert the responses to a spreadsheet and then easily copy comments and paste them on student rubrics.

After other performance-based assessments: Sticky notes on Jamboard.
Students in one of my classes created podcasts for the New York Times Student Podcast Contest. After listening to each podcast, students anonymously left feedback on Jamboard frames. The prompt I gave them was "What did you like about this podcast? What engaged you as a listener?"

When students had presented all of the podcasts, I asked them to complete a second feedback step: scroll back through the Jamboard frames and draw a star on the ones that podcasters should consider entering in the NYT contest. More than any encouragement I could've given, this final step really helped persuade students to take the risk and submit their work.

Using peer feedback in the assessment process requires consistent modeling, repetition, and a commitment to sharing the feedback with students and creating opportunities for them to act on the feedback. But the payoff is worth the effort. You'll be working toward a classroom culture where students feel more seen, heard, valued, and, consequently, engaged in their work.

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When high school students assess each other's work, they have an authentic audience and may be more likely to act on suggestions. It can be hard as a high school English teacher to stay on top of grading all the writing, reading, and speaking I ask my students to do, and yet I know the value of timely and meaningful feedback.

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Strategies to get feedback as a whole class

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Strategies to get feedback as a whole class

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Formative assessment is a proven technique for improving student learning, and the strategies shared here by Jay McTighe work both in the classroom and remotely.

Bob Daemmrich / Alamy Stock Photo

Using formative assessments designed to check for understanding and provide students with feedback and support is one of the most effective ways to improve and enhance student learning. Yet because of the need to cover large amounts of information and develop many skills, teachers may not take time checking to make sure students understand a concept or can effectively apply a skill, and, if they don't, figuring out ways to improve their learning.

Thankfully, there are practical, proven formative assessment techniques that teachers can use as a quick "pulse check" to gauge students' understanding. The eight techniques here can be applied across grades and subject areas in virtual, hybrid, and in-person learning environments.

The results of these checks should not be graded since the purpose of formative assessment techniques is to obtain feedback to use in improving teaching and learning, not to evaluate learning. It's important that students understand the purposes of these techniques, that mistakes are OK-and even expected-and that they will not be graded on their responses.

Thumbs up: I understand _____ and can explain it in my own words.

Wave hand: I'm not completely sure about _____ and doubt I could explain it.

Thumbs down: I don't yet understand _____ and cannot explain it.

Ask students to display a designated hand signal to indicate their degree of confidence in their understanding of a concept, principle, or process. For example:

Self-assessment and self-reporting can be unreliable, so use a random calling technique to periodically select students with their thumbs up (e.g., pull names out of a bowl) and ask them to explain.

In virtual learning environments, students can signal on camera or post designated emojis to signal their understanding levels.

Present students with a few binary-choice statements or questions containing an understanding or a common misconception and have them select a response (e.g., True or False, Agree or Disagree) and share it via a whiteboard, cell phone app, or hand signal (e.g., thumbs up or down). This efficient technique is particularly effective to use in checking students' prior knowledge or potential misconceptions before beginning new instruction.

True/False: When dropped from the same height, a bowling ball will land before a marble.

Agree/Disagree: Is this an example of alliteration?

Here are a couple of "choosing" formats with examples:

In virtual learning environments, students can use the chat box feature to record their choices, or respond to a poll.

3. Picture It

Draw a visual web of factors affecting plant growth.

Develop a concept map to illustrate how a bill becomes a law.

Create a story map or sequence diagram showing the major events in the story.

Visual representations, such as graphic organizers and concept maps, are widely used to enhance learning, and can also be used as formative assessments. Have students create a visual or symbolic representation (e.g., a graphic organizer, web, or concept map) of information and abstract concepts and then be prepared to explain their graphic. Picturing techniques are especially useful to see if students understand how various concepts or elements of a process are related.

In virtual learning environments, students can post their visuals on a Google slide or Pinterest board, or in Nearpod or Jamboard.

4. Troubleshoot It

1. Identify the flaw or error, and (even better)

2. Correct it.

One of the most efficient and effective quick checks for understanding involves troubleshooting. Present students with a common misconception or a frequent procedural error. See if they can:

Present a rough draft of writing and ask students to serve as an editor to mark compositional and grammatical errors.

Have students review work on a multistep word problem to identify computational mistakes and reasoning errors, and correct them.

In a photography class, show photos reflecting common compositional errors or flawed exposure or lighting, and have students recommend needed corrections using photo editing software.

Their responses will provide a quick check of the depth of their understanding.

5. Summarize It

Compose a tweet in 280 characters or less answering the question: What is the big idea that you have learned about _____?

Record a one-minute podcast or vodcast using an app on a smartphone or tablet to summarize the key concepts from one or more lessons.

Prepare a weekly letter to your teacher (or parents) summarizing something that you now understand as a result of your learning during the past week.

Here are a few examples of this technique:

Create a "real life" word problem to see if other students understand how to calculate surface area.

Locate a news article or blog post that presents an example of the tension between individual rights and the common good.

Find examples of symmetry somewhere in our school or on the playground.

Understanding is revealed when students can transfer their learning to new situations. Accordingly, one of the best checks for understanding is to see if students can apply material in a somewhat novel context. This technique includes asking students to find or create new and novel examples to illustrate a newly learned concept.

Develop a five-minute lesson to teach a younger student about how supply and demand can affect the price of things. Use one or more specific examples that we have not discussed.

Your friend has been absent and missed the last two lessons where you learned about community helpers. Draw a picture of at least five helpers in our community to help them understand the concept of a community helper.

This is a more involved, but valuable, formative assessment technique. Ask students to teach a new concept or skill to someone else-a new student, a student who has just returned from absence, or a younger child. You'll be able to gauge their degree of understanding as you review or observe their lesson. Here are two examples:

In virtual learning environments, students can record a lesson using a laptop, tablet, or cell phone camera.

8. Analogize It

A more sophisticated technique invites students to develop an analogy or metaphor to illustrate a newly learned concept or skill. The effectiveness of their explanatory analogy or metaphor can give you insight into their understanding. However, be cautious when interpreting student responses to this technique-a student may very well understand a concept but be unable to generate an appropriate analogy. Asking students to explain their analogies will give you further insight into their understanding.

A fraction is a part of a whole like a wheel is a part of a bicycle.

Formative assessment is like tasting a meal while you're cooking because it provides feedback that a cook can use to make adjustments to improve the meal.

Here's a prompt for students: A _____ is like a _____ because _____.

Students can also create visual analogies (combining techniques 3 and 8). In virtual learning environments, students can post their analogies and metaphors in a chat box or on a Google slide or Pinterest board.

Note: Several of these techniques (especially 1, 2, 5, and 8) can be naturally used in conjunction with another popular formative assessment technique-an exit card-given to students at the end of a class period or end of the school day.

While these techniques can provide valuable information about the effectiveness of teaching and the quality of students' learning, they're not ends in themselves. Instead, they should be seen as the first step in a " feedback cycle." The next step is to act on that feedback-reteaching something that many students failed to learn; correcting misconceptions that may be revealed; and/or providing scaffolded support to students who need it. Moreover, when students are given feedback, they must also be given opportunities to use it, such as revising their work, practicing the skill, or correcting errors. (Getting feedback without a chance to use it is like eating without digesting!) Then, the formative assessment cycle reboots as revisions can be assessed again, with progress noted and new learning goals set.

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Formative assessment is a proven technique for improving student learning, and the strategies shared here by Jay McTighe work both in the classroom and remotely.

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Inviting Participation With Thumbs-Up Responses