Providing Balanced Feedback-2

When feedback is predominantly negative, studies have shown that it can discourage student effort and achievement. Balanced feedback is important for student development and to help prevent future errors. Balanced feedback is feedback that contains a mix of praise and critique. Praise is when you acknowledge the student’s effort and good parts of their assignment. Critique is helpful to provide because students can’t improve if they don’t know what the areas to improve on are, so it is important to provide feedback that points specifically to these areas. The right blend may differ and is not necessarily 1 to 1, but it is important to consider providing both comments that praise student efforts and comments that provide a more critical evaluation of their work.

Critical Feedback

When giving critical feedback, you should aim to provide both precision and specificity in order to be the most useful. Instead of just saying “the writing style is too informal,” try feedback that states that the student made a good point, but to consider writing in third person tone. Or, if the comment is about the student not providing any sources, try to state something like “the instructions required you to provide at least five sources in the essay,” so that the student knows why and how they lost points. And instead of saying “revise your citation to be in the proper format,” rephrase your feedback in a way that it provides information on how to correct the issue, such as “remember to include the page number in the citation.”

Reviewing for Feedback

Ask yourself if you are looking for mistakes or looking for things to praise when reviewing student work. The traditional practice is to search for things to highlight and bring to the attention of students that they need to correct, rather than to provide supporting comments. Students often complain that feedback has too much focus on the negative and that negative comments are usually more specific than positive ones. If a student only receives negative feedback, they will eventually stop listening altogether. When you are correcting student work, make sure to also give praise along with any critique to provide a balance of feedback. This can help keep the student more receptive to your feedback in the future. You don’t want students to withdraw from the course because you are too negative in your feedback.

The key to quality feedback is balance. We don’t want to provide only praise so students think everything is great in the paper, and likewise, we don’t want to be overly negative and frustrate and disengage the student from the learning process. We want to make sure to highlight concepts that need attention, or the student may think it is okay to submit work that is missing or lacking in key ways.

Balanced feedback should create a more beneficial learning climate for the student and for faculty alike.

Tips for Balanced Feedback

Let’s take a look at some tips for providing balanced feedback.

Faculty should remember to focus on the student’s performance, rather than what can come across as personal attacks on the student themselves. When providing feedback, do it from a reader’s perspective instead of a grader’s perspective by being more descriptive and less judgemental. Instead of saying “Your paper is very disorganized”, consider something like “I got a little lost after your introduction, consider reorganizing your paragraphs for a more sequential flow“. Another strategy to consider is structuring your comments as questions, rather than as criticisms. Instead of saying “this is wrong!”, consider asking your students for more information or ask what they meant to say. For example, “I’m confused - could you provide me with more detail here?” or “Did you mean to say?”, and fill in the blank with what you think the student was trying to get at.

Student egos can be fragile, so it’s crucial to keep your tone positive. This is especially important when providing audio or video feedback to students. Constructive criticism is essential for student improvement, but no one wants to be scolded. Suggestions for improvement should be presented in an encouraging and motivating manner. One way to accomplish this is through what’s known as the feedback sandwich. Start by presenting your positive observations. Discuss what the student is doing well and make sure to focus on their observable skills, attitudes, and behaviors. Next, identify areas of improvement by giving descriptions of the student’s deficiencies. Make sure to convey this information objectively and give specific examples. Finally, end with positive comments by presenting suggestions for improvement and discuss how this improvement might be achieved. You should review the student’s identified strengths and propose some solutions about what they can do differently in the future.