Tend to your feedback ecosystem

When teachers are asked about feedback, they typically refer to comments that are given to a student with a graded assignment. When students are asked about feedback, they much more readily refer to various forms of communication they receive outside of graded assignments. This suggests that there is a potential misalignment in values around feedback between staff, university and students. From a teaching point of view it is apparent why this is the case – marked assignments are the bit that ‘counts’. But these tasks do not always provide ample space for movement – there is a lot to do in a limited time when it comes to marking.

However, conceiving of feedback as an ecosystem of interconnected touch points throughout a subject provides more space for change and progress. This rhetoric supports the creation of a feedback rich environment aided by the use of different practices and tools (such as peer feedback, collective feedback, or automated-feedback) wherein students are in contact with more and varied feedback touch points.

Perceiving feedback as an ecosystem allows:

• Triangulation – from the student point of view, having more points of feedback allows them to better triangulate their understanding: in a feedback rich environment there are more opportunities for different types of feedback to be meaningful for different types of students
• Spreading emphasis – by providing more soft touch points for feedback there is less of an imperative emphasis around assessment feedback; students can feel supported without teaching staff having the impossible task of providing perfect guidance through just one instance of feedback
• Time saving – by making use of tools and practices to allow students to obtain their own feedback, you can minimise the need for high touch (or using high touch for feedback that could be provided in more systematised ways)
• Agency – by shifting the focus of feedback from being handed down by teaching staff, peer feedback decreases load and increases student agency; students become better at recognising feedback, and can seek it for themselves
• An easy framework for iteration – you can make alterations, additions, and evaluate and change how you use the framework as needed; a system with loops of feedback provides the information you need to make progressive informed alterations towards a better implementation

The particular elements that you focus on as you grow your feedback ecosystem are up to you, but below we have a suggested process and the Feedback Strategies section of this collection showcases a range of elements that you might like to target.

Keep in mind that each individual shift has value and some nay be more relevant to your situation than others. While you can embed a variety of feedback improvements through assessment redesign, we understand that this might not be manageable at the current time. For this reaso, there are a range of things suggested here that you can adjust and see effective outcomes without having to undergo more fundamental changes.

We suggest growing your ecosystem through a process of iterative change and evaluation. By making small alterations and taking note of how they work you can progressively find an approach that works for your unique circumstances. 

1. Choose one or two feedback ecosystem elements to focus on for a particular subject within a particular session.
2. Engage with resources, implement designs, and note down the metrics you will use to evaluate effectiveness.
3. Experiment by putting them into action in your classes and observing what happens.
4. Draw out feedback on the new things you have tried, and see how it lines up with the evaluation metrics you highlighted.
5. Note learnings and key pointers for the next round of implementation.