Feedback

Feedback has a powerful impact on student learning outcomes and significantly influences students’ satisfaction. Feedback is a process of engaging students in reflection on their learning and enabling them to improve as they move forward (Henderson, Ajjawi, Boud & Molloy, 2019).

Students need to be active participants in this process for feedback to be effective. This means that we may need to teach students about understanding and working with the feedback they receive. This is sometimes referred to as a learner’s feedback literacy - visit Learn from feedback to find out more

Research clearly shows that assessment feedback is a lynchpin to students’ effective decision making, and the basis of improved learning outcomes (Henderson et al., 2019).

Key principles of effective feedback

While there is no single feedback strategy or model that has been shown to work across all contexts (Dawson et al., 2019), several principles can be used to make feedback more effective.

Principle 1: Student-centred feedback

Most of our day-to-day uses of feedback tend to be teacher centred – that is, something that an evaluator communicates to students. A teacher-centred perspective emphasises the role of academics in ‘giving feedback’ and does not adequately recognise students’ active role in the process of their own learning.

A shift from a teacher-centred perspective provides a valuable opportunity to reposition the academic as just one actor within the feedback process.

Watch this video from the Feedback for Learning project on how feedback is a student-centred process.

Principle 2: Actionable and connected feedback

Effective feedback

This section provides advice on feedback practices that are most likely to have a positive impact on learning. It draws ideas from Henderson, Ajjawi, Boud and Molloy (2019) The Impact of Feedback in Higher Education.

Consider the following to establish an effective feedback strategy that will help your students know how to make sense of the feedback they receive, and create an action plan for integrating it into their learning.

It is essential to provide students with clear instructions on the assessment task and explain what is expected of them once they receive their feedback. Let them know what their role is and how they can play an integral role in making meaning of the feedback.
They need to be able to make sense of the information. Also, explain to students how you will give feedback (written, video, etc.) and how they can reach out to you to get any clarifications and start a dialogue around the feedback.
It is important to help students to look at their grades in combination with feedback. “Feedback needs to be designed in recognition of learner capacity, motivation and opportunity” (Henderson et al., 2019, p. 270).
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for feedback, and it's also dependent on the task, your time and the cohort you are teaching.
Consider creating opportunities for students to work together, share ideas as if in a normal working environment so that they begin to see feedback not as a one way communication but a dialogue.
When you are providing your feedback, ask yourself whether the student can take some form of action based on the feedback. Feedback shouldn’t be seen as a once off delivery of information.
Students need to have opportunities throughout the unit to apply the feedback and improve their learning. Therefore, you need to build early feedback opportunities into your unit/course by scaffolding the learning and providing them with assessment tasks that they can improve on. For example, you could have them submit a draft version or portion of an assignment as part of the assessment activity and provide feedback for them to improve upon it before submitting a final version.
You would need to provide enough time for yourself to provide the feedback and enough time for students to apply that feedback and make any improvements.
Whether at the unit level or at the program level, it is integral to build in assessment tasks that can build upon one another so that students can improve their performance and learning.
Feedback influences subsequent work therefore you would need to build in feedback opportunities earlier in the unit so that students have the time and opportunity to implement it.
Feedback can take on many forms and can come from many sources. When you create your assessment tasks, think of the different ways that feedback can be incorporated. It does not always have to come from you.
Consider learner feedback in terms of self reflection, peer feedback, automatic feedback built into quizzes or lessons, or even using industry feedback depending on your context. Students can then start to learn how to make meaning from all the different sources of feedback by consolidating their understanding and identifying any gaps in their knowledge and understanding.

Eight key principles for feedback comments

Henderson and Phillips (2015) offer eight key principles for when educators construct their feedback comments:

Be timely - Provide feedback in time to assist students in future assessment tasks.
Be clear - Use unambiguous and specific language. Avoid broad phrases such as ‘great effort’ or ‘bad grammar’.
Be educative - Make constructive suggestions for how work can be improved or strengthened.
Be proportionate to criteria - Focus primarily on the goals of the assessment task and where most impact is needed.
Locate student performance - Assess how students performed in relation to the goals of the task (feed up), what they did well and not so well (feed back), and what they should work on in the future (feed forward).
Emphasise task performance - Provide guidance on the processes and metacognition demonstrated by the student.
Encourage an ongoing dialogue - This further develops the student’s skills by extending an invitation for further discussion.
Be sensitive to the individual - Encourage positive self-esteem and motivation by recognising them in a respectful and welcoming way. This can be actioned through using their name, affirming what has been accomplished, drawing on your understanding of the person to shape the comments. Students who feel supported and respected are more likely to be receptive to feedback and be motivated to act on it.

Education Performance Standards Framework

You can use the tabs on the left-hand side menu to navigate between the sections or click on the links below:
1. The How-to section provides you with instructions and/or strategies to implement in your teaching.
2. The Supporting your students section provides you with key strategies for creating a good learning experience and a list of resources to share.
3. The Related resources section provides you with additional resources.
Carless, D., & Boud, D. (2018). The development of student feedback literacy: enabling uptake of feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), 1315–1325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354
Dawson, P. (2017). Assessment rubrics: towards clearer and more replicable design, research and practice, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 42(3), 347-360, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2015.1111294
Dawson, P., Carless, D., & Pui Wah Lee, P. (2020). Authentic feedback: supporting learners to engage in disciplinary feedback practices. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02602938.2020.1769022
Dawson, P., Henderson, M., Mahoney, P., Phillips, M., Ryan, T., Boud, D., & Molloy, E. (2019). What makes for effective feedback: staff and student perspectives, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(1): 25-36. DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2018.1467877
Henderson, M., & Phillips, M. (2015). Video-based feedback on student assessment: scarily personal. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 31(1). https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.1878
Henderson, M., Ryan, T., Boud, D., Dawson, P., Phillips, M., Molloy, E., & Mahoney, P. (2019). The usefulness of feedback. Active Learning in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787419872393
Henderson, M., Ajjawi, R., Boud, D., & Molloy, E. (Eds.). (2019). The impact of feedback in higher education : improving assessment outcomes for learners. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25112-3
Liu, N. F., & Carless, D. (2006). Peer feedback: the learning element of peer assessment. Teaching in Higher Education, 11(3), 279–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562510600680582
Orsmond, Paul & Merry, Stephen & Reiling, Kevin. (2002). The Use of Exemplars and Formative Feedback when Using Student Derived Marking Criteria in Peer and Self-assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 27: 309-323. 10.1080/0260293022000001337
Ryan, T., Henderson, M., Phillips, M. (2019) Feedback modes matter: Comparing student perceptions of digital and non-digital feedback modes in higher education. British Journal of Educational Technology. 50(3): 1507–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12749

Your feedback matters

Let us know how we can improve this resource.

Assessment feedback for Learning

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Educator-in-charge Paul Lasky and Education Manager Theo Hughes provide an overview of the feedback in this subject.

Authentic feedback through social media

Educator-in-charge Adam Brown provides an overview of the feedback in this subject.

Moderating audio feedback in first-year psychology

Educator-in-charge Jaclyn Broadbent provides an overview of the feedback in this subject.

Education Performance Standards Framework The Education Performance Standards identify the expectations of education practice at Monash – See the Education Performance Standards for more details.
Impact on student learning				Impact on educational knowledge		Impact on educational environment
Effective teaching and learning	Responsive program design	Student- centred orientation	Professional learning engagement	Pedagogical content knowledge	Education research performance	Education innovation	Education leadership
✓		✓		✓		✓
You could address these Practice Elements by providing evidence of how you: Provide meaningful, constructive and relevant feedback Provide feedback through diverse channels eg video, audio etc Ensure that the feedback is timely Enable a feedback loop process Develop students’ feedback literacy Give students the opportunity to apply feedback

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