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Feedback and Reporting

The document discusses feedback and reporting in education. It provides guidelines for giving effective feedback to students, including starting with positives, offering guidance to improve weaknesses, and concluding with encouragement. Students expect timely, meaningful, and constructive feedback to help them learn and improve. Feedback should be specific, focused on important aspects, and guide students to develop skills and knowledge. Providing feedback according to these principles encourages critical thinking and reflection.

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Meilani Hartono
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199 views3 pages

Feedback and Reporting

The document discusses feedback and reporting in education. It provides guidelines for giving effective feedback to students, including starting with positives, offering guidance to improve weaknesses, and concluding with encouragement. Students expect timely, meaningful, and constructive feedback to help them learn and improve. Feedback should be specific, focused on important aspects, and guide students to develop skills and knowledge. Providing feedback according to these principles encourages critical thinking and reflection.

Uploaded by

Meilani Hartono
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Feedback and reporting

Feedback can be given in a number of ways and does not need to be limited to formal
written comments on formally presented assessment items. For example in the case of
group work that may take place over an entire semester or year, groups can give regular
presentations on their progress or provide mini progress reports. Short in-class
presentations can be used for assessment and have the added bonus of providing
instant feedback on a number of areas such as:

• oral communication skills


• conceptual understanding of an issue or topic
• ability to read and to respond critically to set literature or literature they have
researched
• ability to sustain an argument
• group skills through the level of group contribution and creativity towards the
assessment task.

What students expect

Students expect feedback on their work because it helps them to improve and provides
hints so that they don’t repeat mistakes in the future. Quality feedback is a reflection of
quality teaching, accountability and transparency. We expect students to hand work in
on time and they expect us to promptly and professionally assess and return their work.
Students expect feedback to provide:

• evidence of clear criteria upon which their work was assessed, evaluated and
reported back (a succinct marking criteria will help here)
• detailed and relevant comments that relate to the specific aspects of their work
(for example strengths and weaknesses)
• comments that guide students to improved performances in the future.

Students benefit the most when the feedback is:

• Constructive, which means in addition to noting the strengths and weaknesses


of the work in the assessment task, it provides reinforcement, guidance and
useful information on how the student could improve the quality of their work.
Focus is on improvement. Avoid broad sweeping comments that give little
guidance or knowledge of their performance
• Timely such that it is assessed while still fresh in the student’s mind and ideally
before the student moves on to the next task. Feedback is useless if it comes
after the semester has finished or too far away from the submission date.
Remember that sometimes students wait for feedback before proceeding onto
their next tasks, it also gives confidence to proceed
• Meaningful so they may enhance their performance for subsequent work. The
feedback should also be specific and relevant to the task, the outcomes and the
student.
• Focused on the most important aspects that will give most learning benefit.
Provide both positive and negative instructional advice. It should build on past
learning, understandings or abilities, and encourage further development. Should
also be linked to outcomes and formative and summative assessments
• Justifiable and defendable, so should allow ownership of the comments or
judgments within the context of the learning environment. It should be fair,
consistent and unbiased.
• Respectful, kindly and considerate. Feedback should be provided that shows an
awareness of student strengths and weaknesses, concerns, needs, and
personality.

Feedback that matches these points encourages students to think critically and reflect
upon their work and potentially how they can improve it. It should also provide support
and encouragement. Within the group context, it can promote positive discussions
between group members on the achievement of learning outcomes. Generally, positive
and open feedback enhances the learning process through discussion between you and
your students.

Giving feedback

• Start with a positive comment.


• Provide comments on specific weaknesses in the work.
• Offer guidance on how to correct or improve the weaknesses.
• Comment upon and reinforce new or creative ideas.
• Conclude with an encouraging summary.
• If necessary provide both written and oral feedback.

Develop these skills in students when giving feedback to peers.

Feedback for assessment and/or evaluation purposes

O’Hara and Weber (2005) discuss the need for ensuring that time is taken at the
beginning of the group work activity to discuss how to provide constructive feedback, as
for many students giving feedback about their fellow team mates and receiving feedback
may cause anxiety. To assist them in doing this they provide the following guidelines that
will be useful to students:

• Describe rather than judge or interpret the behaviour that was observed.
• Be specific rather than general.
• Take into account the needs of the receiver of the feedback (considering their
emotional state and ability to receive the information) as well as the needs of the
giver (by considering motives in providing feedback).
• Direct the feedback at behaviour that is controllable; otherwise it is
counterproductive and increases frustration.
• Check if the feedback is welcomed rather than merely imposing it.
• Consider the timing of the feedback, although most appropriate at the earliest
opportunity, readiness for the feedback and the context e.g. presence of others
needs to be taken into account.
• Check that the receiver has correctly understood the feedback.
• Give feedback in a tentative and non-dogmatic manner.
• Check that others concur with what has been said.
While the above relate specifically to giving feedback it is important to stress the need to
show respect for, and act with integrity towards other students. It needs to be stressed to
students that differences of opinion will occur within their groups. However, it is
important to keep these differences in perspective and not to allow them to degenerate
into personal attacks.

Allow time at the beginning of the semester and at the start of the group work activity for
students to clarify what is required of them, and how they should approach assessing or
evaluating either themselves or their peers.

Reporting

Reporting your feedback back to students is very important. Reporting is the process of
communicating information about student achievement and progress gained from the
assessment process. The purpose of reporting is to support learning and teaching by
providing feedback to students. Students' learning achievements and progress may also
be reported to employers. Information about students' achievements may also be
valuable for teacher and systemic wide planning and reporting.

Reporting back to students can be done via formal or informal methods. In the main if
the feedback is being given as part of an assessment process then detailed written
feedback should provide students with a report on their level of achievement of the
learning outcomes related to the task. The marking criteria (and/or well developed grade
descriptors) can be of great assistance in developing a written report which provides
students with relevant and accurate feedback on their performances and achievements.

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