It can be difficult to tell someone what you think of their work, even if you mean well and even if you think they're doing a good job. Sometimes the person doesn't understand what you mean, or doesn't respond the way you'd hoped. Feedback should contribute to learning, but you might sometimes wonder if it's any use at all. South African university lecturer Martina van Heerden studied the art of giving feedback to students in higher education. Her insights and three top tips are useful for effective communication in many areas of life.
Why did you decide to study feedback?
As a tutor, I initially did not get training on how to give feedback to students on their essays. After a while, I started thinking more about what exactly I was trying to say and do with my feedback. For example, if I told a student "your argument lacks depth", was I just telling the to make a stronger argument in this essay, or was there a "deeper message"?
So, in my PhD, I explored "what lies beneath" our feedback. What I found is that often feedback has very specific messages for students, largely about what is valued in a particular context; what the student is expected to know in that discipline.
Feedback is a big concern in higher education globally. It is fairly well researched and most research identifies various problems with it. Students don't seem to take up the feedback, or there are different understandings of its purpose, or it's not as effective as it should be because of academic language and conventions. The blame tends to be put on students.
I wondered if the problem lay instead with how educators approach and give feedback.
Focusing on English literature studies, I analysed written comments given to first year students and worked with the tutors giving the feedback. English literature is a tricky discipline to give feedback in as it involves balancing language, literature and academic literacy aspects. Focusing too much on one aspect in feedback could mislead students.
What did you find?
There was a bit of misalignment between the purpose and the practice of feedback.
Ideally, the underlying message of feedback in literature studies should be to develop students' ability to think critically and analytically about texts. It could do this, for example, by asking questions that stimulate thinking around the topics and themes of the text (rather than asking students to merely provide more information on it).
Most of the feedback in my study, however, focused on correcting surface-level errors like grammar and spelling. Although there is nothing wrong with this in itself, it could mislead students about what is valued in the discipline.
Feedback is often quite frustrating for both students and educators - both research and practice wisdom attest to this. Educators are frustrated because students don't seem to learn from feedback, and students are frustrated because they are getting what they feel is unhelpful feedback. These are global concerns. There is a big discrepancy between how useful educators and students perceive feedback to be.
My work and other research highlights the importance of seeing feedback as a literacy - that is, as a skill - that needs to be developed deliberately.
Too often, it is assumed that educators will know how to give effective feedback, or it is assumed that students will know what to do with feedback. But a lot of the time, they don't - we go by our instincts and what is perhaps easier to identify and correct. For feedback to actually "feed forward" - beyond a specific essay or task - the skill needs to be developed.
How can people give better feedback?
I recommend asking yourself three questions:
1.) What do I want to achieve with my feedback? Ask yourself if you just want to help students pass this essay or do well in this task, or if you want them to learn something. If they need to learn something, what should they learn?
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2.) How understandable is my feedback language? The language of feedback may be steeped in academic, professional, or industry terms which you take for granted. Or you may have developed your own feedback shorthand. This might be easy for you to understand - you're the one writing it - but that doesn't mean a student will. So, ask yourself whether someone who is not you would understand your feedback.
3.) What do I want my students to do with my feedback? Too often, comments don't really give students guidance on what to do. Correcting errors and making statements about students' work takes agency and action away from students. Using questions and suggestions means that students become more active in the feedback process.
Feedback is important for learning and development. Too often, though, it becomes another obstacle that has to be overcome. Useful, clear, actionable feedback can help students become better writers, researchers, thinkers and scholars.
Martina van Heerden, Senior Lecturer in English for Educational Development, University of the Western Cape
