On Feedback, Feedforward and “next time”

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I’m a student again. After completing my PhD 5 years ago, circumstances have led me to enrol in a Master of Teaching in an online program (it’s a long story). Suffice it to say, being a student at this level again is…interesting, and it has me thinking about the foundational nature of learning and how educators tend to assess learning and build capacity through assessment practices.

Written essays and written feedback

Despite what generative AI has forced in terms of conversations around the validity of assessment (see Dawson et al., 2024) essays are still here and still a common way to assess learning. I’m enrolled in an education degree, so much of the assessment is lesson and learning sequence design with essays thrown in as a way for me to justify my choices in terms of learning actives, and links to the Australian and NSW curriculum.

With that said, I’m amazed given the technology available to us in 2024, the style of feedback I’m getting is still largely ‘canned comments’ – that is clearly pre-written small chunks of written information pasted all over my written work, such as ‘expand here’ and ‘well done’, which aren’t very formative for future work. Why should I expand here? Why was this section praised while others were not? Other comments I get are linked to APA referencing (something that wasn’t taught in any class), yet I still am marked on it.

What’s largely missing is a formative means for me to improve as a student – all I get is feedBACK – that is, what I did in the past and judgements about what I got right and what I got wrong, with no mention of what I could do better next time.

Feedforward

This is where feedforward comes in. Instead of simply commenting on work done in the past, educators and those doing the grading / marking, need simply to including phrasing that could help students improve in the future. That’s it. Post complete.

When all is said and done, when we consider how we learn outside of formal education settings, it’s generally by failing miserably and learning from those failures. When we touch a hotplate on the stove as a child, we are burned and the memory of that pain tells us we shouldn’t do that again. We have both feedback (pain) and feedforward (the realisation that we don’t want to experience that pain again).

If I make a mistake in explaining something in my essay, don’t just tell me I made a mistake, but tell me how I can do it better next time – with “next time” being a super easy way to embed feedforward into assessment practice. By saying those magic words, and letting the student know what they can improve upon “next time” students will find this comment much more actionable, because it gives them something to do, not just something to regret.

Assessment Design and feedforward.

Now this may have implications for learning design and it may not. If assessments are designed to be iterative, like having a draft assignment then a final assignment, or a first submission, with a revised submission following the first, then this makes it super easy and intuitive for feedforward to be included, but it’s not required. By simply using the phrase “next time”, feedforward can be used for more generic skills either in academic writing or in any other means of expressing learning.

Just as an example, I don’t give any point value for correct APA writing in any of my assessments. My first class on assessment many years ago taught me that if a class doesn’t teach something, the students shouldn’t be assessed on it, but as it’s important for moving on in different programs and degrees, I still provide feedforward on it. This doesn’t take the form of me ‘red-lining’ each reference or citation, it just means use voice feedback to say “look out for your APA style – for next time check out Perdue’s OWL (Online Writing Lab) or other APA guides to help you”. This is actionable, and speaks to how the student can improve, but it’s still missing a key piece – the WHY of it all.

When I’m told as a student through those little ‘canned comments’ “expand here”, I never know how or why, so to explain this further, even through one generic comment would be helpful, would built my motivation, and help me understand the specific ways ‘expanding here’ would help my argumentation and writing. Having experience as a guest editor of a journal and reviewer of journal articles has been a great validing experience after finishing my PhD. I attended a workshop at the EARLI conference a couple of years ago all about reviewing for journals, and key take away was that ‘we want to support our authors improve their work, so their readership goes up and their work is more widely shared’. This is also the mantra we should use as markers and assessors. With unmarking, open education and room for iteration in assessment left for another time, I’ll simply say this.

Feedback through canned comments and no elaboration for how to improve is really good for assigning a number value, filling out a rubric, and completing the act of summative assessment for something in the past, but it’s not the best approach for building students up for future work. For that, feedforward is the way forward.

References

Dawson, P., Bearman, M., Dollinger, M., & Boud, D. (2024). Validity matters more than cheating. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 49(7), 1005–1016. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2024.2386662