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The aim of this resource is to provide a frame for teaching staff to discuss and support their teaching team in feedback practice.
The following is built around the sessional staff facing resource collection Giving feedback as sessional teaching staff. You may decide to offer this resource to your teaching team for their own review, or consider it yourself so that you can guide them through the key points.
Providing a map for feedforward
A feedforward map is probably one of the most useful pieces of direct support you can provide your teaching team. Feedback research shows that students will react most positively to feedback when it provides actionable points that can be taken into their next most immediate task. Beyond this frame, any feedback given loses a large amount of its relevance and engagement for learners.
This might be a more difficult task for sessional teaching staff because they may not have the holistic focus to provide this form of feedforward information. This could also be the first time they are teaching in the course so their visibility of what they can connect it to might not yet be clear. By providing suggestions from your position as subject coordinator, can make it easier for your teaching team to make these connections when completing their feedback.
The map below provides a frame to think about the information you might like to pass on to your teaching team. You can build up and refine something like this as you iterate on your teaching and assessment practice.
| Before Assignment 1 | Assignment 1 | Feedforward 1 > 2 | Assignment 2 | Feedforward 2 > 3 | Assignment 3 |
| Highlighting the structure proposed. | Short essay | Things to mention: What skills that they might be best to contribute to the group presentation. Things that won’t be as useful: Because the next assessment takes the form of a presentation might be more valuable to emphasise comments around ‘communication’ over use of particular language | Highlighting the structure proposed. | Final essay |
The above also shows how changing the assessment design might help with this feedforward pattern: having the Final essay as the second object allows for more aligned/direct building on the previous task, and then switching tact into a differing mode. Feedback is the point of assessment, so if you see ways that this pattern can be made more clear, consider what changes you can make.
Facilitating a discussion around feedback practice and expectations
Beyond providing the suggested resource collection for your teaching team to work through in their own time, there are actions you can take to give these points additional weight and impact.
The affective aspects of giving and receiving feedback is explored in the casual staff feedback resource Manage the affective nature of feedback. Taking a small amount of time to unpack the key points will add a great deal of validity to these ideas and will help the team focus on giving feedback rather than getting caught up in the discomfort often tied to the practice.
Key affective impact feedback points to touch on:
- Feedback has an emotional impact on those creating feedback as well as those receiving feedback
- Trying to create a piece of feedback that is positively reinforcing which also points out failings is an emotional balancing act and can be very taxing
- Acknowledging with yourself that this is not an easy process and it is a process you will improve at with time and practice helps to shift the focus to what you can do (rather than getting stuck orbiting the discomfort)
Keep in mind that the use of audio feedback can help to alleviate a range of the issues around communication and consequently the affective impacts of feedback. Allowing or suggesting that your teaching team use audio feedback may be something to consider here. The LX Lab has resources suggesting a process and framework for audio feedback that you may find useful.
The Feedforward Map helps in terms of providing examples around the provision of feedback, but there is also the opportunity to discuss and share feedback examples. Many teaching teams have meetings where grading is balanced and discussed. Making use of the time here to share feedback practices and comments can help to create a stronger team and subject when it comes to providing feedback.