Strategies to build feedback literacy and facilitate feedback uptake
As you already know, feedback uptake is essential in assessment for learning. Feedback uptake oriented to learning requires a good command of feedback literacy and self-regulation skills. As teachers, we must give scaffolded support to our learners, to guide them through this demanding process and help them be progressively autonomous.
In this section, you will learn about three strategies to build feedback literacy and, ultimately, facilitate feedback uptake.
Reflection activity:
From what you have read in the previous section, try to anticipate three strategies to build feedback literacy and facilitate feedback uptake that will be introduced in this section.
Learning outcomes, assessment criteria, feedback and the student’s personal goals must be aligned in assessment for learning. Therefore, it is essential that pupils know and understand the assessment criteria of the task from the beginning. It is necessary to specify the assessment criteria right from the beginning, when the task is explained. However, it is not enough to show them. Students must interact with them at different points of the learning process, so that they can get a deep understanding. Here are some activities that will help students appropriate assessment criteria.
- Have a class discussion about the assessment criteria, to have them familiarize with the language used. Use some examples so they can start creating a representation of what the success criteria mean.
- Analyze exemplars (examples of tasks similar to what the task is asking for) and apply the assessment criteria to value them. You can combine examples of good outcomes and bad outcomes, also known as counterexamples.
- Ask students to participate in the establishment of assessment criteria. If you ask them to do an activity that they are familiar with (for example, an oral presentation or a poster), encourage them to say what would make an excellent product. Have a class discussion and agree on what assessment criteria you will use. Of course, you will have to supervise this process. However, it’s a good strategy to ensure they understand the success criteria, because they participated in their making.
- Invite them to apply the success criteria to their own activities (self-assessment) or to the activities of their classmates (peer-assessment). When learners take the role of assessor, they must apply the criteria and, therefore, they create a deep representation of what the success criteria mean and what they look like.
When we ask students to engage in peer-assessment activities, they will have to give feedback to their classmates. Of course, we will ask them to give good feedback; to give feedback that will be helpful for their classmates to learn. However, how do students know what “good feedback” is? Developing the learners’ feedback literacy also implies teaching them what quality feedback is, and learning by doing is one of the best ways to do so.
- As a class activity, set your students in an imaginary class situation, and show them examples of feedback comments that a learner might receive. Ask them to classify between “helpful”, “somewhat helpful” and “not helpful”. Encourage them to explain why they chose to place the comment in one category or the other. Finally, collaboratively make a list of the characteristics of helpful feedback and have it shared in the online learning environment.
- Ask students to engage in self-assessment and peer-assessment activities and have them give feedback intuitively. Afterwards, ask them how that comment helped them learn, and have them reflect on why makes that comment learning oriented.
As a student, understanding what you have to do, what is expected from you, what you have done right or wrong, what you should improve, and planning how to make it better, is very demanding, because it requires a lot of self-regulation and feedback literacy.
We cannot expect our students to do all this autonomously, without any support or guidance. There are some resources we can use with students to help them make sense of feedback. It is important that they identify:
- What they have done right
- What they need to improve
- Their next personal goals aimed at improving
- The actions they plan to do to achieve their new goals
You can easily turn these into a template that students fill in when they receive their feedback. This activity can, of course, be adapted to their age, interests and level.
Here’s an example of what it might look like.
Reflection activity:
Take a look at this learning reflection template.
- Have you ever used a similar tool to support your students’ feedback uptake?
- Do you think this template could be useful for your students? Why?
- Before applying the template with your students, would you have to adapt something? What and why?