Why is Giving Student Feedback Important?

As a teacher, giving feedback to students can be the bulk of the workload. Is the payoff worth the immense effort? In Visible Learning, John Hattie noted that feedback is “one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement”, so if you’d like to increase student achievement in your classroom, feedback can be the key to making it happen. Read more about that study here.

So, we know feedback is important — but does any feedback count? Kluger and De Nisi (1996) found that certain types of feedback can actually make student performance worse.

Confused yet? I was too.

The thing is, the deeper I looked into the research I found that certain types of feedback are superior to others. Even within the right type of feedback, there are seemingly subtle nuances that can affect how that feedback is received by our students. I’ll outline what I’ve found.

Types of Feedback

The type of feedback depends on the goal of that feedback. Formative feedback has the purpose of guiding the learning process, while Summative feedback has the purpose of evaluating student learning at the end of a learning cycle. Grades are one example of summative feedback.

Using formative feedback has been shown to be more effective at influencing student learning and growth.

Effective Formative Feedback is…

• Specific

The more specific that we can be with our students, the better. When students receive vague or general feedback, they can have trouble using it to plan their next steps for improvement. If we are specific, students can learn to set clear goals for themselves and, over time, become more independent learners.

An example this is using the comment “Unclear” vs. “Use transition words to improve organization”, which is more specific to the task.

• Positive

Your relationship with your students will have great impact on how they feel about your feedback, and vice versa. Keeping some feedback comments focused on things that your students are able to do well will give them confidence as learners as well as knowledge of what skills they can build on. Research by Heafy and Losada found that the ideal ratio of praise to criticism is 5.6:1 (read more here), so find something to praise!

An easy way to remember this is to structure feedback as: Compliment, Correct, Compliment.

• Immediate

Feedback given during the learning experience can deepen students’ understanding and ensure they don’t reinforce incorrect ideas or habits. Individuals given immediate feedback show greater increases in performance and understanding compared to feedback the following day.

• Targeted on specific (taught) outcomes

The general rule of thumb here is if you haven’t discussed it in class, don’t comment on it. That may sound very black and white, but if your students don’t know what to expect, they can’t possibly deliver. If you see an issue coming up over and over that you have not discussed in class, that’s an opportunity for a mini-lesson! When comments are targeted to the learning outcome goals shared at the start of a learning cycle, students can set clear expectations for themselves and participate in the discussion about improving the quality of their work.

• Allows students time to process and revise work

Don’t skip this one! It’s so tempting to hand back all of those essays just before the bell rings, but resist the urge. Time for reflection helps students to incorporate feedback and consolidate their learning. Another great tip is to have students track their personal goals that are tied to specific pieces of feedback (ensuring that they are actually reading the feedback). Students are even more willing to read feedback if there is NO grade assigned along with it!

In Conclusion

Feedback is crucial to helping our students develop as learners. It can be a powerful tool to connect with our students in a positive way and see them incorporate learning expectations into their own goals. There are many ways to give feedback to students, but if you want to facilitate positive, immediate feedback that is personalized, read about how different Classkick teachers are grading and giving individualized feedback fast!

If you have questions about using Classkick to give effective feedback to students , check out our website or reach out at hi@classkick.com.