Norhayati Ismail and Patrick GALLO
Centre for English Language Communication (CELC)
Norhayati and Patrick share their Learning Community’s experience investigating the feedback process, particularly the relational and sustainable practices that not only make feedback methods more effective, but also improve students’ uptake of feedback.
Norhayati, I., & Gallo, P. (2024, August 27). Reflections on relational and sustainable feedback. Teaching Connections. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/teachingconnections/2024/08/27/reflections-on-relational-and-sustainable-feedback/
At some point in the teaching-learning process, nearly all educators provide feedback to their students. Likewise, nearly all students receive various forms of feedback and have to make sense of and respond to the feedback they receive. With the goal of investigating best practices around the giving and receiving of feedback, in early 2023, we formed a Learning Community (LC) comprising eight faculty colleagues from across the university1. Our specific objective was to examine relational and sustainable feedback practices not only to make our feedback methods more effective and efficient, but also improve students’ uptake of feedback. By ‘relational’ we mean feedback that evokes a positive response from students and encourages them to learn from the feedback and produce better work. And by ‘sustainable’ we mean that the lecturer can continue providing such high-quality feedback to large groups of students over the long term.
Starting in April 2023, we organised ten monthly meetings during which we engaged in a range of activities to provide an opportunity for LC members to gain insight into relational and sustainable feedback. In addition to engaging with and discussing the relevant literature, we reflected on our own courses and feedback structures, sharing our assessment of our own current practices. We also invited Professors David Boud2 and Peter Felten3 to provide seminars on the topics of reconceptualising feedback and trust as a basis for relational feedback respectively. These seminars were opened to the wider university community and well attended.
Finally, we conducted three focus group discussions with students from across the university to hear directly from NUS students regarding their experiences with peer and teacher evaluations of their work, focussing on what they appreciated, what they would like more or less of, and how they act on the feedback received.
Overall, our LC’s discussions yielded many insights into the nature of relational and sustainable feedback. In the following paragraphs, we summarise some of these key ideas.
Relational Feedback
Fundamentally, we learned that feedback is a process (not a product) in which learners make sense of information about their performance and use it to enhance the quality of their work, behaviour and/or learning strategies. An educator’s role is to facilitate feedback processes—not simply give comments—which start with designing courses which provide multiple opportunities for students to gather and use feedback to improve their performance (Carless & Winstone, 2023). In short, we should be building students’ feedback literacy, not only giving comments and grades.
Another key element, which often determines if feedback is meaningful or not, is trust. With a high degree of trust between the giver and receiver, the feedback is more likely to be embraced and acted upon. Whereas the opposite is also true. When there is a lack of trust, feedback may not be well received. A lecturer can build trust by demonstrating expertise, expressing interpersonal care and concern, acting fairly, and making decisions perceived as sensitive to his/her own and students’ identities. Moreover, the feedback process itself can foster trust. Feedback builds trust when it is clear to the recipient and displays high competence in the field, when it is expressed tactfully, and when it is perceived as fair, balanced, and reliable. Finally, trust expresses high expectations and the belief that students can succeed.
A third element of relational feedback is the concept of students’ academic buoyancy—their ability to respond to challenges and setbacks (Middleton et al., 2023). A student’s ability to accept and ‘bounce back’ from negative feedback is as important as the feedback content. Consequently, feedback must be phrased sensitively so that individual students will not be discouraged and will perceive the feedback process as safe and respectful.
Sustainable Feedback
Highly related to the sustainability of feedback is the concept that students (not teachers) are mainly responsible for gathering feedback on their work. Feedback can and should come from multiple sources, including peers, teachers, and non-human sources (AI, for example).
One source of feedback our LC looked at more closely was peer feedback. For feedback to be meaningful, it needs to be timely. However, when educators are dealing with large student numbers, providing timely feedback is challenging. Designing a peer feedback process that elicits quality feedback from students would help address this challenge to some extent.
For students to provide meaningful feedback to their peers, they need to develop familiarity with assessment expectations and evaluation criteria. Getting learners to evaluate exemplars of former students’ work against the assessment criteria, and subsequently discuss the strengths and areas for improvement, helps students differentiate standards of achievement (O’Donovan, et al., 2008; To, et al., 2022). This exemplar-based practice is a useful precursor to a peer feedback exercise on a similar assignment, as it equips students with the ability to provide meaningful feedback to one another. Nicol et al. (2014) reported that students’ involvement in peer reviews further engages them in “the active interpretation and application of assessment criteria, reflection and learning transfer” (p. 112). Beyond these positive effects on learners, the giving and receiving of peer feedback reduces students’ dependence on teacher feedback (Nicol, et al., 2014). Hence, peer feedback can potentially be utilised more effectively to develop independent self-regulated learners and make our feedback giving practice more sustainable.
From our focus group discussions with students, we gathered two key insights. First, learners’ academic buoyancy determines their reception to negative peer feedback. In the same way that educators should be mindful that we phrase our feedback sensitively, students too need to do the same4. Secondly, how the peer feedback is facilitated has implications for the ‘honesty’ of the feedback being delivered and students’ engagement with the feedback. For example, a peer feedback exercise that allows room for a verbal exchange among peers may generate more dialogue about the feedback than written comments alone.
Feedback can have a significant impact on students’ learning if they are able not only to understand the feedback given but also to act on it to improve their work and/or future behaviour. Hence, looking at ways in which university educators can make their feedback more relational is a worthwhile endeavour. At the same time, examining ways to facilitate students’ access to high quality feedback as a sustainable practice for educators is a major consideration. Consequently, the findings of this LC on relational and sustainable feedback are relevant to university students and educators in all academic domains.
Editor’s Note: In the next installment, a member of Norhayati and Patrick’s LC shares her personal perspectives on the feedback process and key lessons she acquired from this LC experience.
Endnotes
- The members of our Learning Community (LC) comprise faculty colleagues from the Centre for English Language Communication, NUS Business School, and the College of Design and Engineering (CDE). Our LC members are (in alphabetical order): Erik BIRGERSSON (College of Design and Engineering [CDE]), Yasmin MERCHANT (CELC), Yurni Said-Sirhan (CELC), Susan SEE THO (NUS Business School), Danielle TAN (CDE), Jessie TENG (CELC)
- Professor David Boud is Deakin Distinguished Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia.
- Professor Peter Felten is Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning, Executive Director of the Center for Engaged Learning, and Professor of History at Elon University, USA.
- Providing feedback that is balanced highlighting strengths and areas for improvement is one strategy to employ. Maintaining a positive and encouraging tone is another.
References
Carless, D., & Winstone, N. (2023). Teacher feedback literacy and its interplay with student feedback literacy. Teaching in Higher Education, 28(1), 150–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1782372
Middleton, T., Ahmed Shafi., Millican, R., Millican, R., & Templeton, S. (2023). Developing assessment feedback: academic buoyancy and the relational dimensions of feedback. Teaching in Higher Education, 28(1), 118-135. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1777397
Nicol, D., Thomson, A., & Breslin, C. (2014). Rethinking feedback practices in higher education: a peer review perspective. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(1), 102–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2013.795518
O’Donovan, B., Price, M., & Rust, C. (2008). Developing student understanding of assessment standards: a nested hierarchy of approaches. Teaching in Higher Education, 13(2), 205–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562510801923344
To, J., Panadero, E., & Carless, D. (2022). A systematic review of the educational uses and effects of exemplars. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 47(8), 1167–1182. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.2011134
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NORHAYATI Ismail, Principal Facilitator of the LC, is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for English Language Communication (CELC), and has designed and taught a range of professional communication courses to students across diverse disciplines (Business, Computing, Design and Engineering). She has experience developing and teaching communication courses for working adults and English as a Medium of Instruction training programme for content professors from regional universities. Her main research interest is student engagement through course design, use of IT and feedback. Norhayati is also currently an Academic Affiliate at the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT). Norhayati can be reached at elcnmi@nus.edu.sg. |
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Patrick GALLO, Co-Facilitator of the LC, is a Senior Lecturer at CELC. Since 2001, Patrick has served the Centre as Lecturer, Course Coordinator, Faculty Coordinator, Administrative Coordinator (Graduate English Course) Head (Academic Programmes), Associate Director (Programmes 1), and chair or a member of numerous Centre-wide committees. Patrick’s research interests include cooperative learning, embedded instruction and relational and sustainable feedback. Patrick can be reached at elcgpb@nus.edu.sg. |
