What is the “Feedback Challenge”?

If we take a look at the literature surrounding feedback research, it is not uncommon to find that there are many barriers or challenges that may hinder our feedback processes. For example:

• teachers and students hold different conceptions or notions about what is feedback, e.g., the tension between a transmission-focused approach versus one that which is more learning-focused;
• teachers are concerned with whether or how feedback is used while students are more focused on the utility and usability of feedback;
• feedback can serve varied and sometimes competing purposes, e.g., being judgemental versus emphasizing on the process of students’ learning;
• the ‘piecemeal’ approach to feedback which is often the case with courses designed in silos; and
• disillusionment by both teachers and students that feedback is an irrelevant, time-consuming ‘tick-box exercise’, with little to offer in terms of specific and timely comments on how to improve their work.

Of the many challenges facing teachers, one that stood out is this:

How can I provide good feedback to all my students, given my demanding teaching/research/supervision workload and other administrative commitments?

We offer this suggestion as a starting point:

If you are reading this, it shows that you have taken the first step to think a bit more about improving your feedback practices. To change your feedback approaches, the starting point may be the need to disrupt your status quo, i.e., critically reflect and rethink what you have been doing about giving and receiving student feedback and then, set your own goals on how to take small but evidence-informed steps towards developing and designing better or more impactful ways of engaging students in the feedback processes.

To help colleagues overcome this and other feedback challenges, our website will provide you with useful and practical strategies to get started to move towards this direction of using feedback effectively for teaching and learning.