Feedback Strategies

Feedback is information provided regarding one’s performance or understanding and it can be provided by an instructor, peers, or even for oneself. Why is providing feedback to your students important? Knowing what you are doing right helps solidify learning. Knowing what you have done incorrectly or insufficiently empowers you to improve.

Introduction to Feedback

Feedback is central to the learning process and good feedback informs learners about what they need to do to continue learning and improving. Feedback also promotes deep learning which is necessary to develop expertise and to apply knowledge and perfect skills. Some instructors express frustration with how long it takes to provide good feedback and may have doubts about whether students actually use their feedback. The strategies in this section should empower you to communicate effective feedback in a timely and efficient way that prompts students to use it to improve.

  • Relevant – Feedback should be relevant to how, and how well, the student’s work relates to the assignment criteria. Instructors should also describe (in the assignment instructions and/or in subsequent feedback) how the assignment itself is relevant to the student’s goals and interests (e.g., getting a good grade or illustrating a competency that may get them a good job). Addressing relevance can convince learners that the content, learning tasks, and feedback are worthwhile and worth applying, and this, in turn, supports the transfer of learning.   
  • Specific and Individualized – Specific feedback addresses errors and any misconceptions apparent in the specific student’s work. It should also instruct and redirect the student with applicable correction. 
  • Aligned to course learning outcomes – Feedback should elaborate on how well the student met assignment requirements and whether their performance demonstrated mastery of the related learning outcome. If the student’s work does not show mastery, then the feedback should describe how the work should be adjusted to better meet the learning outcome.
  • Robust and Constructive – Feedback that leads to improvement should be qualitatively and quantitatively sufficient to support student improvement. It should be content- and context-specific, with descriptions that reference the assignment criteria. Feedback should be constructive in nature or, in other words, designed to empower students to improve.  
  • Timely – Timely feedback is the feedback that is provided when it will be most beneficial to students, that is when they can use it to make improvements. However, the timing of feedback should be varied based on the skill and prior knowledge of students. 
  • Communicated in advance – At the start of the semester, use your syllabus and Canvas course to inform students of when and how often to expect your feedback. Providing regular and substantive feedback (including both formative and summative feedback) is also an excellent way to provide the regular and substantive interaction (RSI) required by the US DoE in online courses for which students wish to use Title IV financial aid. 

Strategies

Feedback can be formal or informal, and evaluative or descriptive. It can also be formative in nature, given during the learning process to provide additional opportunities for practice and improvement. Or it can be summative, provided at the end of the learning process as an overall assessment of learning. When you share feedback with students, you can share corrective feedback or you can share more elaborative feedback designed to provide guidance for improvement. In addition to correction or elaboration, consider these means of providing feedback:

Feedback provided by well-designed opportunities for peer and self-directed feedback can foster a deep approach to learning. The personal commitment of student peers is critical for both providing and receiving effective feedback, and through the process of providing feedback, students can also gain insight into their own learning process. Appropriate and helpful peer feedback is only possible when students can identify their peers’ success at meeting the established standards for the assignment being critiqued. To help students do this, you can provide feedback forms, checklists, qualitative statements rated on a Likert scale, rubrics, or written expectations. The same tools can be used by students to monitor and self-assess their own work to produce feedback for self-direction and improvement.

The goal in both these approaches is not merely to improve student work and learning, but to also improve such skills as analysis, critique, listening, collaboration, problem-solving, metacognition, and more. Both self- and peer-feedback should be viewed as part of a holistic process of supporting students in becoming self-directed learners.

A rubric is a checklist that provides a uniform set of precisely-defined criteria or guidelines for judging student work, intended to simplify grading, as well as making the process more transparent for the learner. Rubrics provide a way to set up specific criteria that support course learning outcomes or competencies. They provide an efficient way for an instructor to provide assignment expectations and feedback for students. When provided to students in advance for use in completing an assignment and then used later to grade that same assignment, rubrics provide predictability, which is a critical component in a positive learning environment.   

Rubrics can be used to: 

  • grade non-traditional assessments like papers, projects, portfolios, etc. 
  • communicate assessment expectations to users. 
  • align course or module learning outcomes with course assignments and assessments. 

There are several different rubric formats and designs used to provide feedback, such as checklists, criteria grid layouts, holistic rubrics, single point rubrics, and more. Ideally, your rubric will include a description of the task, criteria for evaluation, a measurement scale, and indicators or descriptions of the desired performance for each criteria. 

Using multimedia not only provides variety in feedback methods, but also addresses issues of accessibility and inclusion. Providing feedback via audio or video recordings is an effective method that can positively engage learners, improve the quantity and quality of feedback, and simplify the entire process. Instructors can also annotate assignments in the Canvas speed grader.  

Audio:

Audio feedback can be provided as a series of clips placed proximally, or “anchored” to the specific content that is the focus of the feedback, in a similar manner as traditional marginal notes. For example, a comment about an essay introduction may be dropped in as an audio file in a PDF document or directly into an uploaded Canvas assignment. This enables the instructor to give students targeted comments in specific places throughout an assignment.   

Video:

Video can provide holistic feedback due to its ability to combine audio, video, and text. Holistic multimedia feedback is a way to provide overall commentary on an assignment.  

Tools for holistic feedback include screencast, audio recorders, and even Voice Memo on your phone. If you plan to offer holistic feedback for student Canvas assignments,  consider using the Canvas SpeedGrader: Media comment  This makes Canvas a one-stop for viewing and commenting on student work for both the instructor and the student.  

Screencast:

Screencast feedback captures a video of your screen as you navigate the student’s work, offering verbal and/or visual commentary. The advantages of screencasts include:  

  • Versatility 
  • Applicability to a variety of submission types (text, Image, video, website, etc.) 
  • Ability to mimic an in-person conference with students 
  • Ability to upload to Canvas or record directly into a discussion board.  

Annotations:

You can annotate student work with feedback to provide direct reference-points throughout an assignment that highlight strengths and weaknesses (Ball, 2009). Annotation can serve as a vehicle for building student confidence, framing criticism as part of an evaluation and assessment process. When annotating an assignment:  

  • Use a helpful attitude and respectful tone  
  • Provide balanced comments by identifying strengths and areas for improvement 
  • Phrase comments in the form of questions 
  • Provide comments that are easy to read, clear, precise, and transparent 
  • Give an explanation and justification for the grade or mark awarded 
  • Give a clear description of how the work can be improved 
  • Minimize marginal comments and if lengthy comments are required, use numbers in the margins and then elaborate on a feedback sheet 

There are many tools in the Canvas LMS that can be used to provide effective feedback for your students. For example: 

  • Canvas SpeedGrader: Media comment . This makes Canvas a one-stop for viewing and commenting on student work for both the instructor and the student.  
  • Canvas DocViewer is a tool that allows annotations on online assignment submissions in Canvas. You can use DocViewer to view files and assignments in SpeedGrader. You can view when students view annotated feedback in the assignment details  section of the sidebar. 
  • Quiz questions can be manually graded in SpeedGrader. Essay and file upload questions require manual grading. However, you may also revise scores for automatically graded questions. If you want to grade the same quiz question individually for each student, learn how to grade one quiz question at a time . 
  • Materia can be used as an asynchronous feedback tool for low stakes activities and assessments. Materia is an application that allows you to easily embed engaging apps into your online courses. Materia can be easily integrated into your Canvas course. Learn more from OIT’s Materia Information page.

To optimize your time and maximize the impact of your feedback, combine approaches to create a holistic feedback strategy. The following methods for managing feedback can provide a basis for an overall feedback strategy.

  • Use Feedback Banks: Use Canvas save comments to automate and manage common, repetitive feedback, freeing up time for other instructional activities.
  • Make Use of Automated Feedback: In your course design, integrate Canvas features that can provide automated feedback in response to individual student submissions, such as in Canvas quizzes.
  • Provide Feedback on a Predetermined Schedule: Be sure to communicate how and when feedback will be provided, either in your syllabus or your Canvas course.
  • Leverage RSI: Use feedback strategies that ensure compliance with RSI 
  • Anticipate Feedback Needs: Identify common misconceptions in advance and plan how to address them in feedback.
  • Structure Feedback for Ease of Use: When possible, ensure comments are placed adjacent to the referenced item and when providing feedback separately from the assignment itself, structure and order the feedback to be easily used by students for improvement.
  • Leverage Feedback: If most of the class would benefit from the same feedback, provide that feedback to all students through a short announcement or a group email.
  • Adjust Content to Preempt the Need for Feedback: In some cases, the majority of students will have an issue with understanding or completing an assignment correctly. Consider how to preempt the need for feedback or clarification by adjusting content now for future classes. Misconceptions and issues may be clarified by adjustments to assignment instructions, providing or revising an assignment rubric, or revising the content or assignment itself.
  • Provide Resources and Help: Be sure to make students aware of resources for tutoring or other assistance, and any examples or non-examples that will help them be successful.
  • Support Your Feedback Plan with UDL: Checkpoint 8.4 of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework recommends strategies for increasing mastery-oriented feedback. UDL offers general heuristics and more specific strategies that can increase the effectiveness of feedback that students can use for improvement.