What Is Good Feedback?

Everyone reading this has both received and sent out a lot of feedback. Despite this, being able to formulate what is good feedback is still difficult. Is good feedback outcome-oriented, effort-based, and unconditionally positive; should its purpose be to motivate, increase academic outcomes, and bring comfort? The difficult part of intuitively getting a definition is that everything seems correct. Feedback should focus on outcome and effort; it should be positive yet constructive, bring comfort while motivating, and ultimately, ensure positive academic outcomes. However, that does not give us a strong idea of how to approach it. Therefore, we will start discussing what good feedback should be and some myths around it.

Students already give themselves feedback

Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006), in their paper about feedback and educational self-regulation, recount that traditionally, students have been viewed with passivity and reactivity regarding feedback. The professor gives the student feedback; without the professor’s proactivity, no feedback would be given. However, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) challenge that idea, explaining that students, throughout their work, continuously self-assess, regularly performing and giving themselves feedback. They then say that students do not work without monitoring a metacognitive skill and their progress. The implication of this feedback is to instead view students as someone who need clear third-party feedback but not as those with a dearth of it. What a student requires, then, according to Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006), is for the educator to provide feedback that builds upon the student’s feedback, increasing their ability to perform self-regulation and academic success.

Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) propose a conceptual model to explain the interaction between internal and external processes in monitoring a task. [1] The teacher sets the task for the student. [2] The student internally gathers domain knowledge, strategy knowledge, and motivational beliefs, [3] creating student goals. [4] Then, the student assesses which strategies and tactics are needed to reach the desired internal [5] and external [6] goals. Then [7] external feedback might be given, augmenting, conflicting with, or supplementing the [2] internally gathered knowledge and beliefs. It is important to note in the model that throughout the entire process, the students’ self-regulatory processes provide internal feedback to each part [1-6], influencing their decisions, goals, strategies, and perceived knowledge.

To support this knowledge, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) propose seven crucial parts of good feedback, which endorses student self-regulation.

1. Clarify good performance

Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) explain that for a student to reach the goal, they must understand the goals. In most academic settings, the teacher’s goal overlaps with the student’s. Therefore, the teacher must ensure that the goal that is being set is fully clear and understandable. However, they outline that often, there is a mismatch between the teacher’s goal and the student’s and that poor mismatch is a significant predictor for poor assignment outcomes. When students are unsure of the goals set by the educator, they are left unsure of how to proceed and perform worse.

Feedback then gains a new goal. Instead of only being an assessment of performance, it should also reaffirm the goals and provide a structured path to them.

2. Facilitate self-assessment

Self-assessment is a crucial skill for students, and according to Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006), it leads to significantly higher academic performance. Therefore, for feedback to be successful, it should encourage and lead to higher degrees of self-assessment. According to Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006), students are already engaged in self-assessment, so feedback only needs to nudge them onwards. Feedback should leave students wondering about their work, probing it to understand their errors and successes better. It should not leave them with a direct answer about all they did but rather leave them equipped for a critical view of their work.

Ideally, this aspect of feedback aligns with the previous, where feedback can use the standards and guidelines provided to get the student to think about whether they successfully reached the goals set by their educator and by themselves.

3. Deliver high-quality feedback information

While self-assessment is a virtue for students, educators are still more equipped to provide feedback than students themselves or their peers. Still, there is little agreement on what aspects should be included in feedback. Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) propose that high-quality feedback provides students with an answer to the discrepancy between their intentions and the results. If the students are writing an essay, and their intentions are completely misaligned with the execution, then the professor needs to provide feedback on what went wrong and why the intentions did not come to fruition. Students often do not need help understanding that there is a discrepancy; it is often felt through self-assessment, but how the discrepancy takes shape and how to approach it is valuable, high-quality information that should be provided in the educator’s feedback.

4. Encourage dialogue

Often, students do not understand the information the professor tries to transmit through feedback. When feedback is not understood, academic outcomes are lowered. Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) explain that professors view feedback as a transmission of information that will give students the knowledge they need to improve. Yet, this often creates stiff, inanimate feedback for students that becomes hard to grasp. Instead, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) suggest that feedback should be viewed as a dialogue between student and teacher. Creating a dialogue does not require a physical discussion but rather a format that allows students to engage with the feedback, ask questions for clarification, and have peers work together with their feedback. According to Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, creating an environment where feedback becomes integrated and discussed instead of being professed is important.

5. Encourage positive motivation and self-esteem

Feedback should not only focus on outcomes. Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) stress the importance of motivation and self-esteem in an educational setting and that for students to be willing to continue working at their best, they need to feel motivated. Therefore, while still upholding all of the previous traits, the feedback given by professors should also focus on student effort. If the students only receive feedback on what they can improve without getting recognized for a large amount of effort, they will feel bereaved and defeated, as if all their hard work was for nothing. Therefore, paying attention to the effort given is important, even if the effort was not applied optimally. Given the need for effort and information, optimal feedback should underline and applaud the effort while providing information on how to apply that effort in a more goal-aligned sense.

6. Provide opportunities to close the gap

During assignments, students will have a desired and actual performance that often ends up misaligned. Students will then feel lost and unsure of how to proceed, wondering why their current behaviors are not leading them to their desired situation. According to Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, the professor’s role is to give regular feedback during the assignment that gives them an idea of how to change their behaviors to reach their goal. Ideally, then, feedback should be given after the assignment and during it to ensure that students can understand how to change their actionable behaviors and reach their desired performance.

7. Use the feedback for teaching

When a professor is assessing student’s knowledge and learning, it is vital for them to understand that they are also assessing their own teaching. The student gains knowledge through the transmission of information under education. If that education is faulty or slanted, it will affect the student’s performance. Therefore, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) stress the importance of educators being insightful and introspective when assessing students. Professors must continuously think, “What does this say about my teaching?” throughout the feedback, and then take the information given and take action from it. Without an introspective view of feedback, students will never be able to learn to their fullest potential, and the professor will never be able to teach to their fullest potential.

Where does this leave us?

Feedback is a complex, interwoven series of traits that professors must always be able to administer. The difficult part of feedback is also its most valuable: feedback impacts many aspects that, in turn, affect academic outcomes. It is crucial for a professor to be able to administer feedback and also accept it. This theoretical discussion should provide insight into what to consider, and for practical application of these ideas, go to the Application section.