Feedback - Faculty Portal

What Makes Good Feedback?

Feedback is essential in online courses. Not only does it make connections between the learner and the instructor, feedback scaffolds learning to increase knowledge, experience, and inspire improvement. So...what makes feedback good?

Timely: Feedback should be provided in a timely manner so learners can make adjustments on current and future work.

Constructive: Feedback should be constructive by identifying ways to improve. It is not meant to criticize, but must still identify what needs to be corrected.

Specific: Feedback should also be specific by identifying specifically what needs to be improved. Specific feedback also provides the opportunity to make adjustments.

Collaborative: Feedback should be a give and take with the opportunity to clarify and respond. It supports a sense of community in the course by building relationships. Explaining why the feedback is suggesting changes can help the learner understand the reasoning.

Empathetic: Feedback should demonstrate kindness and not be harsh or judgmental.

Instructor Feedback

Feedback is crucial in online courses for several reasons:

Guidance and Clarification: Feedback provides students with guidance and clarification on their progress and understanding of the course material. It helps them identify areas where they may be struggling or need additional support. Feedback can answer questions, address misconceptions, and offer explanations, ensuring students stay on track and understand the material.

Motivation and Engagement: Effective feedback helps to motivate and engage students. When students receive timely and constructive feedback, they feel valued and supported, leading to increased motivation and a sense of accomplishment. It encourages them to actively participate, seek improvement, and take ownership of their learning.

Improved Learning and Performance: Feedback plays a important role in improving students' learning and performance outcomes. It highlights areas of strengths and weaknesses, enabling students to focus their efforts on areas that require improvement. Constructive feedback helps students reflect on their work, adjust their strategies, and make necessary revisions to enhance their understanding and skills.

Self-Assessment and Reflection: Feedback allows students to engage in self-assessment and reflection. When provided with feedback, students can evaluate their own work in comparison to the given standards or criteria. This process promotes metacognition and critical thinking as students assess their strengths and weaknesses, set goals, and make adjustments to their learning approaches (Torres, 2022).

Support Community in Online Courses: Feedback fosters communication and relationships between instructors and students in online courses. It creates a supportive learning environment where students feel comfortable seeking clarification, expressing concerns, and engaging in dialogue with their instructors.

Course Improvement: Feedback also benefits instructors by providing insights into the effectiveness of their instructional strategies, course design, and materials. Instructors can assess how well the course content is being understood and identify areas that may require further clarification or revision. For example, if an assessment has a lot of questions from students the expectations may need to be clarified or if a particular rubric item is not met by many perhaps there needs to be more instruction on the item.

Overall, feedback in online courses facilitates learning, promotes engagement, motivates students, and fosters effective communication between instructors and learners. It is an essential component in supporting students' growth, development, and success in the online learning environment.

Peer Feedback

Peer feedback is another way to support learning in online courses. Learners sometimes struggle with providing feedback to their peers. Here are some tips instructors can incorporate to support the process.

• explain the purpose of peer feedback including detailed instructions and expectations.

• set parameters for appropriate feedback.

• provide examples of good (and bad) peer feedback.

• provide support such as rubrics or guiding questions to help learners give feedback to their peers.

The ability to provide feedback is a valuable life skill to support others and to self-assess your work. 

Rubrics

Rubrics are helpful to instructors and students. Rubrics are versatile tools that can be used for any activity to provide structure, clarity, and guidance. In online courses, rubrics can be used for discussions, written assignments and exams, group work, peer feedback, and projects. Rubrics typically include a description of the assessment. Rubrics provide clear, focused expectations, outlining what is expected by identifying the criterion with specific details for each. The criterion are the specific parts of the assessment. A scoring element is included with different levels for each criterion. The scoring levels build from a lower level to a higher/highest level of expectations. Then each criterion corresponds with a grade level to include a description of how to achieve that grade. 

Rubrics can be helpful to instructors in designing the assignment by aligning the criteria to the outcomes. The criteria set the expectations and help you ensure all elements of the assessment are included. The expectations of the assessment and how it will be graded are transparent to you and the students. Rubrics also support your teaching by offering clear, focused options for grading and feedback. They can reduce grading time by offering consistent evaluation standards and an "outline" to assess student work. A rubric allows instructors to set criteria for each students performance and reducing the potential for bias resulting in fair and equitable grading. Feedback can be communicated via the rubric and its specific criteria with comments and additional details added as needed.

Rubrics are helpful to students for many of the same reasons they are helpful to instructors. Rubrics identify the expectations for an assessment so students understand the criteria that will be used to evaluate their work. A rubric clearly identifies what they need to do to be successful. When students have access to the rubric prior to starting an assignment they can use it as a guide to plan their work. Rubrics also allow students to self-assess their own work prior to submitting so they can make revisions if necessary. Rubrics can also help students identify the different levels of the assignment and support them in setting high standards for their work.