Self-Assessment Question:

Do you know how to provide "feedback" to students (as a process distinct from "testing") in a way that helps enhance their learning?

Quick Take:

Difference between Feedback and Assessment: Giving feedback to students is similar to "assessing of student learning" but different in several important ways. Feedback and assessment both require students to do something, e.g., remember, recognize, design, assess, or whatever. Both also apply criteria and standards to student performance in order to evaluate the quality of their work. However, assessment stops at that point and simply announces the results of the assessment to the student: "You got a B," or 78% are correct, or whatever the grading format calls for.

Feedback differs from assessment in three ways:

• In feedback, the teacher and the student(s) engage in dialogue about what distinguishes successful from unsuccessful performance, i.e., they talk about criteria and standards.
• In feedback, the student performance is done without grading consequences. In this sense, the student is in a "practice situation."
• Feedback is done for two purposes that are different from the primary purpose of assessment:
  • It is done primarily to enhance the quality of student learning and student performance, not to grade that performance.
  • It also has the potential to help students learn how to assess their own performance in the future.

Good Practice: What can a teacher do to provide good feedback to students?

• Provide practice time: Give students frequent opportunity to "do," without grades, whatever it is you will expect them to do at assessment time (at which time it will count for a grade).
• Explain criteria: Spend time helping students understand, individually and/or collectively, what the criteria are and what the criteria mean, that distinguish good performance from poor performance. For example, when you want students to write or think with "more depth," "better arguments," or "more relevant evidence," spend some time helping them learn what those criteria mean.
• Consider using peer feedback and evaluation: Given proper instructions, students can learn how to both (a) provide feedback to help others learn and (b) assess the work and performance of other students. This helps them learn how to distinguish between good and poor quality work, and may reduce the workload on the teacher during the early stages of improving student performance.

According to Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (see reference below), teachers should provide feedback that is…

• Informational rather than controlling
• Based on agreed-upon standards
• Specific and constructive
• Quantitative
• Prompt
• Frequent
• Positive
• Personal and differential (i.e., focuses on the increment of personal improvement that has occurred since the last time the learning was performed.)

References:

1. "Providing Ongoing Feedback", Chapter 3 in Educative Assessment by Grant Wiggins. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998. Suggests that "The best feedback is highly specific, directly revealing or highly descriptive of what actually resulted, clear to the performer, and available or offered in terms of specific targets and standards." Offers distinctions between good and bad feedback, and examples of good feedback.

2. "Feedback", pp. 242-246 in Diversity and Motivation by R. Wlodkowski and M. Ginsberg. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995. Provides an excellent short list of the characteristics of effective feedback.