Using feedback to engage online
In their new online learning environment, your learners will be missing the direct and immediate feedback they would have received in the classroom. They will be less able to benchmark their understanding and progress against their peers, making the feedback they receive in the online environment more important than ever.
Without your usual classroom presence, your feedback can become a tool to support students to understand their progress and development and to act as a touchpoint for engagement.
You will be very familiar with providing feedback to your learners. However, in the current situation, using feedback to engage is now more important than ever. Let’s take a look at a few examples of approaches you might like to try.
Multimedia feedback
You will no doubt be getting used to trying to emphasise your presence online. Alongside traditional verbal feedback, using audio or video to deliver your feedback can be an additional opportunity for you to show your presence and engage students.
Audio or video feedback can be particularly useful for group or collective feedback. You can use it as an opportunity to highlight the positives and congratulate your learners on their work while pointing to the common themes that most could improve upon.
Formative feedback
For formative activities such as quizzes, discussion forums or group activities, formative feedback provides a reward for completing the activity. Typically, engagement in online formative activities can be a challenge which is likely to be exacerbated by the current situation and will place greater demands on your learners time.
Making it clear that engagement in formative activities will be rewarded with feedback that will help students in their summative activities may help encourage participation.
Feedback dialogue
Feedback does not have to be a one way transmission. Feedback can be used as an opportunity to create a dialogue about progression, performance and future improvement which can be particularly valuable for online learners. Consider the following options for ways to create a conversation around the feedback you provide:
- Ask learners to submit a self-grading reflection on their submission highlighting where they think they could have improved. You can comment on their reflections within your feedback.
- Offer the opportunity to discuss your feedback informally.
- Offer the opportunity for learners to request feedback on specific areas when submitting their work- this may be very helpful for those who are looking to fine tune their academics skills.
Approaching feedback as a dialogue is a great way to put your learners at the centre of the experience and make the feedback process more engaging, relevant and useful.
Feedforward
Students prefer feedback which helps them to look forward and improve their performance in the future. Be sure to incorporate constructive feedforward approaches, providing specific points for the learner to address in their future assignments.
Consider positioning your feedforward comments as actions for the learner to undertake or questions on how they think they can make improvements in the future. This is more impactful and powerful for the learner to receive than just a mix of positive and negative feedback.