Practice Makes Perfect – Scaffolding Feedback
If a learner doesn’t have the opportunity to learn from and incorporate feedback in future assessments, what’s the point?
I have been asking myself this question frequently over the past few months. Specifically, I have been reflecting on both my own learning experience and my teaching practice in terms of the value I place on feedback. As a learner, I valued feedback that allowed me to improve on future assessments, though I rarely had the opportunity to incorporate the feedback I received into assessments in the same course. Often, I would be given a grade, with a few notes throughout that said things like “vague” or “expand here” or I would see small check marks or areas crossed out. What did this mean? What had I done well? What had I done incorrectly?
As an instructor, my aim is to ensure that learners are given feedback that: 1) articulates what was done well in an assessment and why so learners can continue to incorporate their strengths; 2) identifies specific areas/components that could be improved and outlines ways to improve; 3) goes beyond the current assessment and makes specific recommendations for future assessments in the class.
Thinking of feedback in this way has meant that I not only have to rethink the kind of feedback I give, but also the ways in which I give feedback and the overall structure of the course. Feedback that articulate strengths and areas for improvement, with examples and tangible next steps, is lengthy. Writing that amount of feedback is challenging and runs the risk of being unclear. One way I have addressed this is by providing audio feedback. Audio feedback allows me to be more descriptive than I might be in writing. I also appreciate that audio feedback can remove some of the fear out of “receiving feedback”. It is hard to glean a tone of voice from written feedback, whereas audio feedback can much more easily convey encouragement. While I do not provide audio feedback for all assessments, I have made a particular effort to use audio formats for the first one or two assessments in a course.
In terms of course structure, feedback with actionable next steps requires that I provide opportunities for improvement. To do this in the courses I teach, I have increased the number of assessments and decreased the contribution of each of these to the overall course grade. For example, in a course I recently taught, learners had a total of five assessments (excluding quizzes and a final oral exam). This meant that learners had the opportunity to incorporate feedback from the first assessment into up to four additional assessments. Further, two of these assessments were formatted in such a way that learners submitted drafts and received peer feedback before submitting their final assessment. In this way, all learners receive actionable feedback prior to the end of the class.
While this approach requires much more work on the end of the instructor, I feel that this extra effort is necessary if I am to ensure that learners have the opportunity to digest, understand, and act upon feedback. If my ultimate goal is to provide learners with the skill set to improve, I need to give them the opportunities to hone these skills. Otherwise, I am handing my learners a toolbox and not teaching them how to use them.