What can educators do?

So if we want to overcome some of these barriers that can make it difficult for feedback to have an impact on learning, often the emphasis is placed on educators responding to that challenge, and taking all the responsibility for overcoming the barriers. But we’ve talked about a model of responsibility sharing, where overcoming each of those barriers requires input from both students and staff, and working in partnership to overcome the barriers.

So, for example, that challenge of knowing what feedback means, and being able to understand the language, there’s obviously a really key responsibility on educators to try and frame comments in ways that are clear, and that the students can take action upon, but there’s also an onus on students there to seek further input and guidance, if something isn’t clear, to be willing to ask, so that they can decode the meaning, and therefore use the feedback to improve their learning.

Similarly with those strategies that students may not know how to take action on feedback, I think there’s a really important responsibility on the part of educators to build those skills in students, to take the time within the curriculum to help students understand what kinds of things they can do to take productive action upon the feedback. But there’s still a really important role for students there in asking which of those strategies they should use, perhaps seeking further guidance if the strategy they select isn’t working, so being willing to engage in that dialogue.

And what we argue is that if educators can put in those bits of the process to support students to really understand and use feedback, then overcoming some of the other barriers should then be able to under the control of students. So in terms of feeling in control of using feedback, if as educators we can design assessments so that it’s possible for students to apply feedback from one situation to another, we can enable and empower students to use the feedback, but the students still have a responsibility for looking for those points of transfer, and being willing to apply feedback from one area to another, even if that doesn’t come across particularly easily to them when they look at particular tasks they’re working on.

And finally, in terms of students’ motivation to put in that hard work to use feedback, naturally the main responsibility there is for them, but we can support that as educators by making the use of feedback something that’s valued and rewarded, even built into the assessment pattern itself.