Designing effective feedback processes is important for almost every teacher. An interesting question is: how do you design a feedback process that saves you time and work as a teacher? After all, what teacher wouldn’t want to spend less time and effort giving feedback? In this blog we will describe a feedback process where lots of feedback is organised, students learn from it, but you don’t have to break a sweat as a teacher. This process incorporates the golden rules of transformative feedback.

To encourage the learner or student to take action when giving feedback, we use the golden rules of transformative feedback:

1. What do I want my students to think about? (e.g. What criteria are we focusing on?)

2. How much independence do I expect at this point in the learning process?

3. What form of feedback is most appropriate at this point in the learning process?

4. In what kind of action can I concretely observe that thinking has taken place? (landing space).

What is a feedback process?

A feedback process is a process you organise around a learning objective. For example: You are able to write a convincing and coherent text (using persuasive and substantive arguments). Make sure you use feedback processes especially for learning objectives that are so important that you can commit teaching time to them reasonably. Especially if you have little “time” in your teaching programme, it is important to choose this learning objective carefully.

Product or skill?

The learning objective will largely determine how you design the feedback process. It is a good idea to consider whether you are dealing with a specific product that you want your students to be able to produce qualitatively (e.g. writing an argument or conducting a debate) or whether you want them to learn a specific skill (e.g. knowing the meaning of causality or being able to solve mathematical equations).

In the first case, you want students to improve on the same product with each round of feedback. Take the example of writing an argument: then the end goal is to produce a good argument (product). All forms of feedback will then contribute to delivering a good argument in this case. So each new round of feedback focuses on the argument, so the feedback is always in service of the product.

If the focus is on a particular skill, then you may want students to take the feedback into a subsequent activity, but it is not so much about delivering a particular (perfected) product. For example, if the focus is on the skill of explaining in open-ended questions in History, then the feedback does not focus on one product or task, but feedback can be given in different tasks on how students explain in open-ended questions. So here the feedback process takes place in a variety of different assignments.

A step in the feedback process: feedback and a follow-up step

Below we highlight each step in the feedback process as shown in our poster. The ‘gears’ sign indicates a landing point where feedback received is acted upon. If you are trying to identify the required prior knowledge in step 1, you act if it does not seem to be there. Once a sense of quality has been established, students begin to work on a first task or draft. This is followed by classroom feedback as they work on a second assignment or a second draft, and so on until students submit a final assignment or draft for assessment.

Step 1: Identify the prerequisite knowledge

Before starting to organise feedback around the chosen learning objective, it is necessary to determine what prior knowledge is required to achieve the learning objective. For example

– You can explain the purpose of an argument.

– You can give criteria for a good introduction.

– You can identify arguments in an existing text.

– You can recognise a thesis statement in an existing text.

You will want to check with a process of formative action whether your students have sufficient prior knowledge. This also determines how you can proceed in the feedback process. If they don’t have enough prior knowledge to write an argument successfully, it doesn’t make much sense to start anyway, because you have agreed with your colleagues to start writing an argument this week. Welcome to the dilemma of “mastering vs. covering”. Do you want to just “get it done” or do you want to achieve deep understanding among your students? If it is the latter, you must be prepared to make (sometimes painful) choices. You may find that certain essential prior knowledge is not sufficiently present and that you need to pay attention to it before you can proceed with, in this case, writing an argument.

Step 2: instilling a shared sense for quality

The next step is to develop a sense for quality; after all, you want to develop a sense for quality as early as possible in the learning process. If you want to read more about developing a sense for quality, read this blog[link]. A sense for quality is best taught by showing students different examples that they can compare. In this way, students experience what quality looks like and what elements make one example better than another. By discussing this with the class, the quality criteria of the final product can be determined together, and the sense for quality becomes a shared sense. This also increases student involvement and ownership.

Another way to instill a sense of quality is to use yourself as an example. This is also known as ‘modelling’ or ‘thinking aloud’. In modelling, you act out loud how you would approach a task, step by step, so that students get an idea of what is expected of them.

Step 3: Classroom feedback

At the beginning of the feedback process, it is good to give feedback to the whole class, so that you can steer students in the right direction towards the learning objective without leaving them too little to think about. In the past, individual, detailed feedback has often been preferred. However, whole class feedback can be just as effective as individual feedback. Whole class feedback does not match the learner’s product or skill exactly and is not tailored to the individual. Instead, it ensures that learners have to actively think about what piece of information applies to them. They also have to put that information into action, the landing spot. So ideal feedback is not ideal. After all, we want it to be more work for the receiver than for the giver, and for the feedback to make the student think. If the feedback is too detailed at this stage, we deprive the student of the opportunity to take action on the feedback, which is exactly what we want.

When giving feedback to a whole group, you might consider a feedback outline. Before you give the feedback you decide which part you are going to give feedback on: what should be removed first before students can move on? In the feedback summary you mention the most striking things you found when checking the products. This way you don’t give away too much, but you organise the “nudge in the right direction”. This forces the student to make the translation to their own work, making them think and improve their own product – and therefore themselves. A nice bonus is that you, as the teacher, do not have to spend much time on it. By keeping the focus of your feedback, you ensure that the students have the same focus.

The type of feedback you organise next depends a little on the product and/or the end goal. The process outlined at the beginning is not a straitjacket, so feel free to organise the following forms of feedback differently to suit your chosen purpose.

Example:

Step 4: Feedback to each other

With the steps of developing a sense for quality at the beginning of the feedback process, a list of quality criteria has been created. Learners can use this list of criteria when giving feedback to each other. Identify a few key criteria on which learners will assess each other or let learners choose a few quality criteria on which they would like to be assessed by their peers. We recommend using a single point rubric for this. This rubric ensures that the focus is on what went well, but also where there is room for improvement. Apart from setting the criteria, this step in the feedback process is not a lot of work for you as a teacher, but it is very rewarding. Not only will students look at their own work in a different way once they have seen the work of their peers, but they will also look at the feedback given more critically than when the teacher gives it, which ensures that students actively engage with the feedback given.

Step 5: Feedback to yourself

It may sound a little strange: giving feedback to yourself. But it is a very valuable form of feedback. Now that the students are further along in the feedback (learning) process, they have also created multiple products and thus the feedback has had multiple landing places. As a result, they are now better able to look critically at their own product. As soon as you produce something, even if it is just an answer to a question, it is a form of feedback to yourself. For example, you could have students answer an open-ended question on Padlet and then read all of their classmates’ answers. Then instruct them to write feedback on their own work: what was good about your own answer, what might you have missed, what would you like to add or change? It may be helpful to include criteria such as, in the case of the example given, ‘how is a good explanatory answer constructed’. Encouraging students to reflect on the content may also lead them to new insights about the objective that they might not have had otherwise. Moreover, this is an essential skill in a (final) examination, where we as teachers no longer play a role in the construction of the answer: students then need to be able to look at their own answer and check whether, for example, it is complete, correct, well-executed or specific enough. They should be able to look at their own product and give themselves feedback.

Step 6: Teacher feedback

Finally, it’s the teacher’s turn! Now it is up to you, the teacher, to give some feedback. This could very well be in the form of audio feedback or a video recording of you giving feedback on ‘student work’. If all goes well, there may not be much feedback left to give because the students have already had many different forms of feedback. Provided there has been a good landing place after each form of feedback given.

Steps 7 and 8: Review and look back

Finally, the real reviewing can begin; you are going to evaluate the product. Of course, you will use the criteria you (hopefully) worked out together at the beginning of the feedback (learning) process. It is important that the product fits well with the learning objective. Are students able to fully demonstrate the learning objective with the product? If not, then the product is not really appropriate and you can think about whether there is another way, other than the usual test, in which students can demonstrate mastery of the learning objectives.

Finally, do not forget to reflect on the process and discuss it with the students. This will help you to improve the design and organisation of your feedback process, and will help your students improve their feedback literacy.

In conclusion

By designing a step-by-step feedback process, you can get more results with less effort. However, the main purpose of these steps is to protect you from yourself. After all, as a teacher you tend to do too much yourself. On the other hand, don’t think of it as a straitjacket: feel free to deviate from the process outlined, as long as the student remains the most active participant!