1. What is Feedback?
2. Why is it important?
3. How to give effective Feedback?
3.1 Giving Feedback to a large cohort
3.2 Audio Feedback
We all receive feedback on a daily basis, from simple observations about our appearance to more complex matters such as formative assessment and different approaches to learning, including Competency-Based and Inquiry-Based Learning.
In this article you will look at what feedback is, how it is given and how to give effective feedback. This article is about VLE, but the recommendations below can be used in face-to-face lessons.
1. What is feedback?
We could claim with no doubt that feedback is based on the socio-constructivist theory (Hughes, Wood & Kitagawa, 2014; Päivi & Hanna, 2017) which underpins that learning is the product of individual knowledge processing in conjunction with interactions with others in a given social context.
If you make an effort to provide personalised feedback, in a timely manner, both in groups and individually, using audio feedback, you can be sure that you are making your contribution to education.
When thinking about feedback we have to take into account its types, among which we have, Verification Feedback, " is exactly how it sounds and is nothing more than the instructor verifying that an answer is correct or incorrect" (Steele & Holbeck, 2018, p. 3; Máñez, 2020), and on the other hand, Elaborative Feedback, the purpose of which is not only to indicate whether an answer is correct or not, but to give "explanations or clues about why an answer is correct or incorrect without explicitly mention the correct answer" (Máñez, 2020, p. 58) in this way knowledge is consolidated helping pupils to "avoid the same mistake next time" (Steele & Holbeck, 2018, p. 4).
Additionally, Chetwyng & Dobbyn (2012) propose the following taxonomy of feedback:
As it is shown feedback must not be only focus on content (concepts, theories, etc.) but also on skills (verbal, numerical, planning). Although attention should be paid to retrospective part, in other words, the current student's performance in comparison with the goal set (Retrospective-on-content/skills), feedback should also serve pupils to make future adjustments (Future-altering-on-content/skills) and avoid the same mistakes (Chetwynd & Dobbyn, 2012; Hughes, Wood & Kitagawa, 2014).
2. Why is it important?
There are numerous reasons for this, including the socio-affective role between teacher and student (Päivi & Hanna, 2017), better performance, and others. However, I would like to add a further reason that is in line with the principles of modern teaching, which is to adopt a student-centred approach to teaching rather than a teacher-centred one (Hughes, Wood & Kitagawa, 2014).
By maintaining this approach, we can gain a better understanding of the positive or negative impact that feedback can have on a student's life (Wang et al., 2021). It is therefore essential to identify the most effective method for providing feedback in order to achieve a net positive outcome, or at the very least, minimise any negative impact.
3. How to give effective Feedback?
Your aim must be to give Elaborative Feedback but if let's face the reality this is simply time consuming. But just focus on indicating whether the answer is correct or not and add a congrats the type: "Excellent, good job! apart from becoming a cliché, you will make students more dependent on the teacher to know if they are doing well, returning to that old teacher-centered paradigm. Moreover, several studies show that this situation generates greater dissatisfaction in students by not knowing why they have obtained a certain grade due to the lack of a quality feedback that shed light on what they really need to know (Hughes, Wood & Kitagawa, 2014; Päivi & Hanna, 2017; Carruthers et al., 2015).
So to give effective Feedback you should personalise it, in other words, it must be based on relevant data you get from our student's performance and why not to add student's name instead of just saying: "There is something missing here", or "It was OK, but next time don't forget to...". Your goal must be to give a pinch humanity to the message you want to convey in our feedback (Trigonaki, 2019; Steele & Holbeck, 2018).
Second, you should give Feedback timely, which is as soon as your learner has finished the task or activity (Steele & Holbeck, 2018; Trigonaki, 2019; Peroukidou & Kofou, 2019; Wang et al., 2021) or even during the process of one task or activity having a great impact on the final product. Different from a face-to-face lesson in VLE time is really short and probably you struggle to complete the academic plan or even worse if you have book to finish before ending the year. However, it is compulsory to give feedback as soon as possible to have the intended effect.
What can you do so your feedback has the aforementioned characteristics and to be less time consuming?
3.1 Giving feedback to a large cohort
Some of the advantages are that you can give feedback to several students in a single lesson, you can give feedback in the form of a written document, shared in a collaborative document or presented in class, allowing students to interact. You can also tailor feedback to our group of students and use data from other groups to help them avoid possible future mistakes. You can also post Feedback on your LMS (Google Classroom, Canvas, etc.) as a resource for future reference (Harris, 2017).
3.2 Audio Feedback
In both virtual and face-to-face classrooms, you can give written or verbal Feedback. However, the thought of giving feedback to each of your students can be overwhelming. Despite this, some studies of distance learning emphasise the importance of giving audio feedback rather than written messages.
One of the advantages of using audio is that it allows you to add that necessary human touch to our messages by using your own voice, something that is difficult to do with a written message. You can also share more information for the same amount of time you would have spent typing a message, especially if you aren't good at it. And even if it takes the same time to record audio feedback as it does to record written feedback, audio feedback will always be more meaningful.
This can have a positive effect on your students, as they will have a clearer and easier to understand message, which allows them to be more engaged and willing to respond to the teacher's feedback, initiating a conversation about how to improve their performance and increasing autonomy due to the socio-constructivist role of feedback (Carruthers, 2015; Päivi & Hanna, 2017).
Some LMS, such as Blackboard Learn+, Moodle and Canvas, have a built-in audio system to provide feedback. But not all institutions are willing to invest in such a platform. In my case I used Google Classroom and Vocaroo (www.vocaroo.com), the latter because it allows you to record a large audio file for free and is easy to use. Once you have recorded the audio, Vocaroo generates a unique link that you can copy and paste wherever you want, avoiding the need to upload or download a large audio file. In this way, written feedback can be replaced with audio feedback that contains a warm and more understandable message for your student (Carruthers, 2015).
Conclusions
Feedback plays an important role in contributing to student-centred education, as it not only allows the level of achievement to be determined, but also provides valuable information that can be used by students on future occasions to improve their performance. Most of us are now teaching in virtual or distance learning contexts, for this reason it is a must to continue to look for new ways to provide valuable feedback to our students, taking into account the socio-affective role that it plays, as this point is greatly affected by virtual learning. If you make an effort to provide personalised feedback, in a timely manner, both in groups and individually, using audio feedback, you can be sure that you are making your contribution to education.
References:
Carruthers, C., McCarron, B., Bolan, P., Devine, A., McMahon-Beattie, U. & Burns, A. (2015). 'I like the sound of that' - an evaluation of providing audio feedback via the virtual learning envrionment for summative assessment. Assessmente & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(3), 352-370. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2014.917145
Chetwynd, F. & Dobbyn, C. (2012). Consitency v autonomy: effective feedback to a very large cohort. Paper from the Annual STEM conference 2012. Retrieved April 27, 2021 from https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/consistency-v-autonomy-effective-feedback-very-large-cohort
Harris, N. (2017) Providing efferctive cohort feedback on examinations. Cardiff University College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Retrieved April 27, 2021 from https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/learning-hub/view/providing-effective-cohort-feedback-on-examinations
Hughes, G., Wood, E. & Kitagawa, K. (2014) Use of self-referential (ipsative) feedback to motivate and guide distance learners. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 29(1), 31-44. DOI 10.1080/02680513.2014.921612
Máñez, I. (2020). ¿Influye la retroalimentación correctiva en el uso de la retroalimentación elaborada en un entorno digital? Psicología Educativa, 26(1), 57-65. https://doi.org/10.5093/psed2019a14
Päivi, R. & Hanna, V. (2017). Toward personal and emotional connectivity in mobile higher education through asynchronous formative audio feedback. British Journal of Educational Technology, 49 (2), 292 - 304. DOI 10.1111/bjet.12587
Peroukidou, V. & Kofou, I. (2019). The impact of feedback on Distance Education student's learning process. Research Papers in Language Teaching and Learning, 10(1), 154-169. https://rpltl.eap.gr/images/2019/10-01-154-PEROUKIDOU-KOFOU.pdf
Steele, J. & Holbeck, R. (2018). Five elements that impact quality feedback in the online asynchronous classroom. Journal of Educators Online, 15(3), 1-5. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1199171.pdf
Trigonaki, E. (2019). Student's perceptions regarding the strengths and weaknesses of written feedback in distance learning: The case of the TESOL M.Ed. of the HOU. Research Papers in Language Teaching and Learning, 10(1), 170-187. https://rpltl.eap.gr/images/2019/10-01-170-TRIGONAKI.pdf
Wang, H., Tlili, A., Lehman, J., Lu, H. & Huang, R. (2021). Investigating feedback implemented by instructors to support online competency-based learning (CBL): a multiple case study. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 18(5), 1-21. DOI 10.1186/s41239-021-00241-6
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