6 Giving Good Feedback Online

Mini weaves can take a bit of time initially but are a great way to provide feedback to an entire class or a small group. A mini weave is essentially a summary of discussions around a particular topic, such as forum posts, replies to a posed question(s), or responses to a learning activity. In the classroom, it is the equivalent of summarising discussions at the end of a tutorial or seminar.

In a mini weave, you don’t need to summarise everything that is discussed, but instead recap the key or common themes throughout the discussion. Identify a key takeaway for the students to remember, and finish up your mini weave with a stimulating question for further discussion. This will give you an opportunity to see how well your students are engaging with the content at a deeper level, and develop a sense of belonging in the course. Mention students by name where possible.

Refer to Boettcher, J.V. & Conrad, R.-M. (2016). CB Tip 14: Discussion Wraps: A Useful Cognitive Pattern or a Collection of Discrete Thoughts? In The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips (pp. 160-162) for more guidance around mini weaves.

Audio recordings are a powerful feedback mechanism that can help students better understand the context of your comments. Students can pick up on your tone, emphasis, and other cues that written feedback cannot convey. If you’ve never recorded audio feedback before, it may be useful to write out a script for your feedback. Be aware of any restrictions on the maximum time for audio recordings in your learning management system. This will help keep you on track and ensure you address all the main points of your feedback. Once you are well-versed at recording audio, this can often be quicker than written feedback (Maher Palenque, 2016), and it further builds your relationship with the students.

Lunt and Curran (2010) found that audio feedback is at least ten times more likely to be opened than written feedback. Be mindful, however, of hearing-impaired and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) students in your course, who might find it more challenging to process information delivered through speech. In setting expectations for the course at the beginning of the study period, advise students if you plan to use audio feedback, and advise that alternative methods of feedback can be provided as needed.

Consider using audio feedback for formative assessment as well as summative. For example, why not record your mini weave as an audio file and post it to the course site.

Video feedback, like audio, can pick up on nonverbal cues that assist students with understanding feedback. McCarthy’s study (2020) noted that 94% of students responded favourably towards video feedback for future courses. The overwhelming majority (94%) of respondents in the student evaluation of teaching in McCarthy’s (2020) research stated that the video feedback was helpful and constructive, with 95% of respondents noting the video feedback as a key indicator for course quality. Students in the survey did remark that not knowing their assessment grade until the end of the video was nerve-wracking; however, by sharing their grade first, you risk the student not listening to your carefully crafted feedback!

As with audio feedback, make sure your video is accessible, and provide an alternative feedback method for students with vision or other impairments. Some students may not have access to high-speed internet, so make sure if you use video feedback it is short and precise, to keep the file size small.

You might find that the term rubric is sometimes used interchangeably with the term marking guide, but they are in fact different. A marking guide is a set of criteria with simply a number assigned to each criterion. A rubric includes detail describing the learning criteria and level of quality they will be assessed on, giving students the opportunity to review their own work against the rubric prior to submission. A completed rubric that is provided to students with their marked assessment piece can show students where their strengths are, and perhaps where they need to spend more time refining.

This is perhaps the most conventional form of feedback. In on-campus courses, it may look like talking to students individually during or outside scheduled classes, meetings during consultation hours, or over email. In the online environment, this might look a bit different. Face-to-face meetings might be replaced with Zoom, and there may not be opportunities for informal discussions after a synchronous activity.

Here you can use the tools offered to you by your learning management system (LMS) to your advantage. Many online tools are available in LMSs that integrate feedback on student performance to replicate the type of learning conversations that teachers and students would normally have in the classroom. These tools can allow students to select an answer option from a list before receiving feedback, make decisions and experience the consequences as feedback, or require students to provide extended responses before receiving feedback. Provide formative learning activities as a way to replace the learning conversations that you would normally have with students in and around your face-to-face teaching. Formative activities can remain a part of your course website going forward, providing future students a blended learning experience that will require little ongoing maintenance or facilitation from the teaching team.

Using the tools available within your LMS (and other supporting tools offered by your institution) is a low-effort, high-impact way to build your teaching presence in the course and allows you to access data analytics to see if your students are really engaging with and understanding the content. This puts you on the front foot as to where students may be struggling to understand concepts and need extra support.

Group feedback doesn’t just refer to group assessments. For example, a mini weave is a type of group feedback. If you provide a reflection point for students to submit anonymous feedback on how they found the week’s content, you can summarise this feedback and announce it to your students, providing your response to the issues raised. This adds to your teacher and social presence and shows students that their feedback is received and acted upon.

Race (2020) suggests providing “generalised group feedback on the key learning areas that affect most students within one week of the assessment”. This gives students the opportunity to benchmark their work against other students’ when they receive their individual feedback, without singling out any students who may be struggling.

Peer feedback allows students to learn from each other’s successes and weaknesses. It also allows students to develop their own feedback skills and learn more deeply (Race, 2020).

If setting up this type of feedback, ensure you provide students with the tools they need to offer constructive feedback. An example of how this might be done is to provide students with a rubric and an example of the rubric used in the provision of feedback for an example assessment.