Provide Meaningful Feedback that Increases Student FUTURE Engagement, Participation, & Achievement

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~ estimated 22-minute read ~

Feedback…what does it mean to provide meaningful and purposeful feedback to students? Quickly, I can tell you what it’s not. Feedback should not be solely communication with the student to tell the student how the student did on an assignment after it is submitted. Yes, you heard me right. And, if you are doing this type of limited feedback, no worries, I, too, did the same for years.

And then I heard a presentation at a live ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Conference about feedback and providing the type of feedback to students that increase their FUTURE student engagement, learning, progress, achievement, and confidence. You read that right…FUTURE!

So, in this article, I am going to share with you how you may update the feedback content you provide to students to make a bigger and better difference, past the assignment they just submitted, and you are grading, but into the next lesson or unit.

Let’s jump in!

What should feedback look like in our classroom? Feedback should be communication we provide to our students about improving their current performance on an assignment or assessment. This task gives students the opportunity to showcase or show off their mastery of the current learning outcome(s) to us, their teacher, and any other audience who is in the classroom, school, or outside the classroom.

Feedback should also provide information to improve students’ future performance and as a result, their mastery that they develop in the next lesson, or the next unit. In this shared mission, feedback should be both meaningful and purposeful. I’ll explain both attributes when it comes to feedback and what they have to do with providing feedback to students.

One of the most important missions of providing feedback to students is that the feedback simultaneously influences both their present and future mindset, action, and intention in our learning activities and assessments. The impact of our feedback is it has the potential to either positively or unfortunately, negatively impact our student’s engagement in their learning. Because of the power feedback has to alter our students’ states around learning in our classroom, feedback is incredibly important for teachers to deliver and deliver well. We need to know how best to provide the feedback in a way that best serves our students. The role effective feedback plays in our instruction is one we should gain expertise in as we provide it to our students. And let me tell you, the payoff is HUGE!

What makes feedback meaningful for students? Feedback is meaningful to the student if 1) the student understands the feedback, 2) the student can relate to the feedback in an objective way about the student's performance, 3) the student recognizes now, looking at the student's own performance from the teacher’s view, what can be improved to make it better, and 4), the most important, the student knows the student has your support when making the revisions and moving forward. The student also knows you have faith in the student's abilities, and the student feels and sees this confidence while reading or hearing your feedback. Our feedback’s meaningfulness is super meaningful to our students, and they tend to take it personally.

What makes feedback purposeful for students? First, know and appreciate that there is a direct relationship between our feedback and a student’s action and mindset after reading or hearing our feedback. We can make this feedback strategy extremely simple: View the feedback you provide to a student, from the student's point of view. Students understanding our feedback we proved to them can ripple affect a student’s engagement in our instruction and his or her learning. We want our feedback to guide the student to close the gap between what the student submitted and what the student should have submitted to showcase the student's understanding and application. We also want our feedback to inspire students moving forward into the next lesson, so they do even better. Our purposeful feedback may also give students information on our expectations for their learning as well as the correct process and timing moving through the task. However, make sure the rubric always initially communicates your expectations to your students.

How should we provide feedback to students? There are different ways we may provide feedback to our students.

In an online learning environment, you may place feedback in assignment comments, and these types of comments usually can be in the form of text, audio, or video, in most LMSs (Learning Management System). I am a BIG fan of changing it up. I try to be unpredictable with the way I deliver my feedback which seems to make students look for and anticipate my feedback (again, never underestimate natural curiosity in our students). You may also place your feedback per criterion in an assignment rubric if you set the rubric to have that feature. For example, in the Canvas LMS, I create a rubric that allows me to “free-form” comments for each criterion. I can also save comments, so I have the comments for future use, saving me time when providing feedback to students inside the LMS. If students submitted a Word document or an online Google or Word document, both allow me to annotate right on the student’s document. I have found this type of feedback especially important in the ELA (English Language Arts) and Math classrooms (writing my feedback on student assignments that are completed in OneNote). Annotating our feedback directly on student’s work takes out the step for the student to refer from our feedback to their work. That step takes extra time on the student’s part if the student has to go back to the student's submission after reading a specific point in our feedback about a specific part of their submission.

One-on-one student conferences are a great way to give a student feedback on the student's performance. The advantage to having a feedback conversation is that it becomes a two-way exchange, where the student may ask you questions as you provide the feedback. It is also best practice in the feedback of all forms to ask students questions. Unlike a conversation when you can hear a student’s response, the student would need to type their answers to your questions in the LMS you add to your feedback on his performance, which again, is another step that takes time on the part of the student. Having a verbal discussion, even though it is synchronous in nature, saves time for both the student and the teacher. However, provide bullet points of the feedback so the student may listen to your feedback and not have the need to take notes during your feedback conversation.

Some teachers, due to different time constraints send their feedback in an email so students can easily reply to the feedback instead of replying to teacher feedback in an LMS assignment. Additionally, some teachers cc the parent in the feedback email, but I do not encourage that practice. The feedback discussion should take place between the student and the teacher. This extension of “privacy” shows the student you respect the student to take care of the revisions and increases the trust the student has for you. However, cc-ing a special education teacher in the feedback is a good practice, as long as you ask the student first if the student minds if you include his support teacher. Again, empowering students to make the choice nurtures the relationship you have with the student.

Sometimes, you may use peer reviews as a mode to provide feedback to students. Make sure before taking this step all students know the expectations of the project as well as how to do a productive and respectful peer-to-peer review. I highly recommend they refer to the rubric you created for the assignment. It's a valuable practice to introduce the rubric with the entire class each when the assignment is introduced to students. Reviewing and explaining every criterion on the rubric is very important to make sure students understand your expectations. Showing a good teacher example and an example that needs improvement for each criterion is a solid practice that holds HUGE student performance and time benefits. The time I invested creating teacher exemplars of good and not-so-good examples for each rubric criterion ALWAYS saved me time in grading, providing feedback, and supervising peer reviews, since many of the normal questions that came up in peer-reviewing were answered when the good and needs improvement examples were assessed with the rubric with the class.

Also, make sure you provide students with a method for peer-reviewing their peers’ work. The peer-review method I used while teaching is the 3 P’s Peer Review method.

1.       Provide the peer with Praise. What was good or excellent about his performance?

2.       Pose a question. Ask the peer something about the peer's performance that either you do not understand, or you want more clarification (yes, students need to know what the word “clarification” means).

3.       Suggest or recommend a way to Polish his work. Do it with respect and a smile on your face. The next step after peer review feedback is that the student whose performance was reviewed has the choice to revise his work, or not, based on his peer review’s suggestions.

When should we provide the feedback to students? Continually! Yes, we should be providing students with feedback throughout the assignment or assessment process. In the first ten years I taught, I only gave feedback after a project, or an assignment was submitted. However, that is before I heard the ISTE presentation about the feedback. The speaker provided all the benefits of providing feedback at the beginning, middle, and end of a project, or writing.

The feedback you provide the student at the beginning of his work is to check that the student is on the right track and communicate to the student that the student, indeed, is on the right track, or what the student needs to change to get back on track. This one step may be the most important in setting the stage for the student to earn a B or better grade on the student's project. Also, the feedback given at the beginning can be short, verbal if you have the scheduling and process to do so, and make sure it supportive. You want to be super positive with the student at the onset of the work.

In the middle, teachers should be checking back in with each student, seeing the student's progress, asking questions for clarification to make sure the student has a plan that sets the student up for success as the student completes the work. In the middle of the process, you can make suggestions, but I would frame those suggestions as questions for the student. For example, “John, what if you….”, or “Jane, have you thought about….”, or “Jim, what gave you the idea to do it this way?” You want to empower the student to make the student's own decisions, but at the same time, make sure the student is following the process, meeting your expectations, and doing the work in the right manner. Your questions can reveal to the student the answers. The middle is also a beneficial time, if the student is not completing steps on time, to give the student a pep talk or a pacing guideline.

The feedback you may provide at the end should be in two steps:

Step 1: After the student submitted the student's work, peruse quickly through it and look for any omissions or improvements the student can make to increase the student's performance and grade. Look, we do that same step in the workplace. Why not give students the same benefit which helps them cultivate skills in receiving feedback and constructive criticism when the student IS in the workplace?

Step 2: This second phase of feedback on the final submission is after the student revised the student work's work, based on your Evaluative Step 1 feedback, and submitted the assignment again. At this time, I use the rubric and create my feedback-free form in each criterion in the rubric as well as type, audio, or video capture a comment in the assignment. I also like to give badges for student work that earns an 80% or better. You can check out my Incentivize Students with Badges in the Canvas LMS Free Guide. Let me tell you, high school students come to want the badge really bad before they want the A+. Thanks to the world of video games for the power of that extrinsic motivator!

What are the different types of feedback we may provide to our students? A little bit about this answer was given above: text, annotations on the file submitted, audio, and video. Again, I recommend changing up the way you provide feedback, so students look for it because they'll feel curious about what form of feedback you send to them. Other ways to provide feedback, as stated above are one-on-one student conferences, messages sent in your LMS message system, and in the virtual class chat when you are giving the type of feedback that is fine for all to read. You may also use the Praise app that is available in Microsoft Teams to provide positive and supportive feedback on learning tasks inside a class lesson and learning activity. Providing feedback in break-out rooms is another rich way to provide feedback to teams or groups of students for team projects or tasks.

Different types of feedback we can provide to our students can be termed, descriptive feedback, evaluative feedback, or prompting feedback. The purpose of the feedback you want to provide determines which kind of feedback you provide, and at what time inside the assignment or project process. Descriptive feedback is more about the task (what is the assignment, the expectations, the content, the steps, the resources, where do I go to get it, how do I turn it in). This type of feedback usually happens at the beginning of an assignment or assessment. Prompting feedback is provided in the middle of an assignment or assessment and this type of feedback is about the process of the task. Help students work out errors, find strategies, stay on track, and consider different ideas and ways to complete parts of the task. Lastly, evaluative feedback is given at the end of the assignment or assessment, after it is submitted for revision or submitted for review and grading. What was great, good, and what could improve? Evaluative type of feedback may also support and enthuse the student and set the stage for learning progression and goals in the future, after this assessment.

In addition, using technology to provide student feedback makes it easy, accessible on-demand, and takes on a variety of media forms. Students can refer back to the feedback teachers provide while they are inside the assignment or assessment when we post our feedback online.

What are the benefits for students when we provide meaningful and purposeful feedback? When we provide meaningful and purposeful feedback to students as they are performing in our classroom, it provides the following benefits:

1.       It increases student’s confidence as they are working on the assignment or assessment if you provide meaningful and purposeful feedback, in the beginning, middle, and end after submission.

2.       It increases communication between you and your student which nurtures your relationship with your student.

3.       It speaks of your genuine interest in supporting your student’s success. This asset is extremely important in supporting your student as you head into the next learning outcome and assessment. Feedback can be one of the best ways we support our students since our feedback is personalized to their work.

What are the benefits for teachers when we provide meaningful and purposeful feedback?

1.       It decreases our time grading at the end after final submission. Without our feedback at the different stages of assignments and projects, more errors that weren't found and corrected or revised would create the need for us to provide more feedback about what was not done correctly, which may discourage students as they move into the next lesson and assignment. I would limit specific feedback about what was not done correctly to three points and make the feedback statements about what was incorrect short, and about the work, not the student.

2.       Again, feedback helps to nurture our relationship with our students which pays off in many ways such as better attendance and classroom management as well as increased effort, participation, and performance.

3.       Our feedback helps develop student’s intrinsic motivation since most students love getting positive attention and communication from their teacher. Students usually show up doing well in assignments and projects because they want more positive feedback, credit, and praise.

My top suggestions when providing meaningful and purposeful feedback to students:

1. Be consistent. Provide feedback on most assignments and all assessments. Providing meaningful and purposeful feedback to each student is especially valuable in the virtual learning environment.

2. Be continual. Again, giving feedback at different times inside one assessment is important for different reasons and results. Students hearing from you at the beginning, middle, and end of an assignment helps and supports them to succeed.

3. Be comprehensive. Without making the feedback too long and overwhelming, make sure you cover all the points you want to cover in one time of feedback. You do not want to remember other points and provide multiple feedback messages at later time on the same assignment, whether it is in the beginning, middle, or end.

When providing feedback, make sure the student knows the answers to these three questions in your feedback:

1) Where am I going?

This question feedback is about the learning goals you have for the student as well as the learning goals the student has for the student. Using a paper or digital Academic Student Action Plan helps both the teacher and student know and be attentive to monitoring the progress towards those goals.

Check out the template I created for a digital Academic Student Action Plan in my FREE Capitalize and Strategize using Virtual Learning Student Benefits to Increase Student Engagement Guide. I used Microsoft Sway to create the Academic Student Plan.

2) How am I doing?

This question’s feedback gives the student information about how the student's current performance aligns with the student's learning goals. Is the student's progression supporting the student's learning goals?

3) Where to next?

This question’s feedback tells the student the activities the student needs to do to make better progress in the current performance for future performance and meeting the student's learning goals.

Your comprehensive nature in providing the feedback should also teach students how to self-assess their own work. They should be learning from your example.

4. Be a consultant. Again, you want to wear the hat of a consultant. Many times, it is super beneficial to give your feedback to students in the form of questions, so the student comes up with the answers as the very feedback you wanted to provide. This simple step empowers the student to take the initiative to finish in a winning way and gives the student more control over the student's performance.

This technique should also build the type of energy that drives the right pace to finish the assignment or assessment on time. Providing feedback that helps the student self-regulate throughout the task is also an important part of your feedback message and intention. After students hear or read your feedback, it should be clear to students what specific actions they need to take to improve their progression through the content, learning, and task. Your feedback should cause changes of actions intended to result in better and more sustainable learning.

5. Be caring. As you provide your feedback, do it with a smile while you are typing or writing the feedback. Believe me, smiling while composing makes a positive difference. The energy that is given and felt in your words and expression is very beneficial when the student interprets your feedback message.

As you learn about your students and build relationships with them, you should pick up on their triggers and know what to say or not to say to keep the feedback productive, helpful, and supportive. As the teacher, you always want to consider how the student will interpret your feedback. Also, remember your tone in your feedback can make or break it with your students., and once broken, it's hard to build back. It is extremely important to give priority to how the feedback will be received, which many times has a direct correlation to how it was given.

Save time with my FREE Swipe file of Feedback Starter Templates that you may download which provide feedback starters to save you time composing meaningful and purposeful student feedback.

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Please comment below—How do you plan to take the feedback you provide to students to a whole new level??

Next week’s blog topic: Want to know how to encourage students to turn on their cameras during virtual classes? Check back to learn 31 strategies to do just that!