Welcome to the Teaching & Learning Guide for Providing Effective Student Feedback! 

This guide includes best practices and tips designed to help you: 

• Write valuable grading comments on student assignments;

• Use varied methods to give general feedback to the whole class;

• Facilitate effective online discussions;

• Request support from your Instructional Designer and the Technology Service Desk.

Providing meaningful feedback for students can greatly improve their performance, achievement, and development. Effective feedback, then, is essential to the learning process. Whether you are giving valuable feedback on a graded quiz, essay, presentation, or project, you can help students become life-long learners. 

Tips for giving valuable feedback: 

Focus on formative feedback. 

The more typical way of understanding why we assess students is summative assessment, which attempts to measure how well a student has learned the material. However, it may be more useful for instructors to shift their feedback toward formative assessment, which is aimed at future performance rather than past performance. Formative assessment can help students become more independent learners because it gives them a framework for tracking their own progress. 

Offer ongoing and consistent feedback. 

In order for formative feedback to be most effective, students need opportunities to apply feedback to improve throughout the course. In order to build in a consistent feedback loop, it may be useful to include more smaller, low-stakes assignments throughout the course. Using grading rubrics will also help you give consistent feedback and speed up the grading process. 

Be specific and offer ways to improve. 

In order for students to apply feedback, it needs to be actionable, goal-oriented, and tied to specific learning objectives. When giving feedback, it is helpful to link it specifically to already established course learning objectives. This will also ensure feedback is consistent. It is helpful to directly reference the prompts, rubric components, and give an action-plan for how to improve their work. 

Be encouraging.

Although it is important to give students specific feedback about what exactly they need to do to improve, it is equally important to let students know what they did well. Being mindful about how you give feedback as an instructor can ensure that students are motivated to improve, rather than nervous and self-conscious. Encouraging language, such as letting students know they have the skills to improve, can help them stay motivated. It may be helpful to “sandwich” improvement feedback between positive feedback.

SpeedGrader in Canvas makes it easy to evaluate individual student assignments and give students feedback in the form of comments, annotations, and scoring rubrics. 

Review the Canvas Guides below to get started using SpeedGrader for student feedback:

• How do I Use SpeedGrader?

• How do I grade a file upload submission in SpeedGrader?

• How do I add annotated comments in student submissions using DocView in SpeedGrader?

• How do I leave feedback comments for student submissions in SpeedGrader?

• How do I use a rubric to grade submissions in SpeedGrader?

Watch the 20-minute video (with closed captions) below to see an instructor give student feedback in SpeedGrader.

Discussion boards can foster collaborative knowledge building. However, to achieve this goal, instructors must become active facilitators. This means that instructors are involved in the discussion forum in the form of reading and replying to posts. 

Tips for Facilitating Online Discussions: 

Give examples of appropriate responses.

Before discussion boards begin, it can be helpful to give students examples of what a discussion post looks like. This gives you an opportunity to model deep engagement with course materials, using sources, and thinking critically. 

Keep conversations on track.

It is common for discussion posts to veer off track. As the instructor, you can respectfully interrupt any distracting dialogue and reset the conversation by asking clarifying questions or providing additional directions on the prompt. 

Encourage deeper inquiry and application.

Encouraging students to continue to think about ideas can help them apply course concepts outside of the course. Instructors could encourage application and deeper inquiry in several ways, such as pointing to current events, connecting to other concepts, or discussing potential impacts of the ideas discussed. You can also use your knowledge and experience as the subject matter expert to give insights that go beyond the texts.

You can reply to discussion boards as an instructor in Canvas. 

Review the Canvas Guides below to help you provide feedback in discussion boards. 

• How do I reply to a discussion as an instructor?

• How do I view and sort discussion replies as an instructor?

• How do I mark discussion replies as read or unread as an instructor?

• How do I subscribe to a discussion as an instructor? 

Whole-class feedback can be an effective and time-saving way to respond to student work. It can also help build community by promoting the idea that everyone is learning together. When giving feedback to the whole class, it is important to strike a balance between making sure feedback is relevant to everyone while also not singling anyone out. 

Tips and Best Practices for Giving General Feedback:

Summarize what students have learned so far and highlight what is coming.

It is useful to begin whole-class feedback by giving students a brief overview of what they have learned so far. A brief summary of course content can help students to better retain important concepts and take-aways. Whole-class feedback can also be an opportunity to scaffold concepts by discussing connections with what you’ve covered so far and what is to come.

Facilitate discussions rather than deliver lectures.

You can turn whole-class feedback into a student-centered activity where everyone can work together to discuss and brainstorm revisions and areas for improvement, as well as what was done well. It may be useful after these large group discussions to give students an opportunity to revise past work or focus on how to avoid similar areas on the next assignment. 

Highlight resources available in the course for deeper understanding.

If students are still struggling, it is important that they know there are resources available to help them master the material.

You can create an announcement to share important information with all students in your course and use Inbox to communicate with all students, individual students, or groups of students in your course. 

Review the following Canvas Guides to get started: 

• How do I add an announcement in a course? 

• How do I use Inbox as an Instructor?

• How do I send a message to a user in a course in the Inbox as an instructor?

• How do I send a message to a user in a group in the Inbox as an instructor? 

• How do I send a message to all course users in the Inbox as an instructor?

• Assessing by Discussion Board. (n.d.). Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://teaching.unsw.edu.au/assessing-discussion-board

• Developing Deep Reflection in Discussion Boards - Center for Teaching and Learning: Wiley Education Services. (2020, September 01). Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://ctl.wiley.com/developing-deep-reflection-in-discussion-boards/ 

• Gooblar, D. (n.d.). Student Feedback Matters-and It Goes Beyond Grading. Retrieved March 19, 2014, from https://community.chronicle.com/news/392-student-feedback-matters-and-it-goes-beyond-grading

• Stenger, M. (2014, August 06). 5 Research-Based Tips for Providing Students with Meaningful Feedback. Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/tips-providing-students-meaningful-feedback-marianne-stenger 

• Wolfley, L. (2016, September 13). Providing Whole-Class Feedback, Sept. 2016. Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://cetl.uconn.edu/2016/09/13/providing-whole-class-feedback-aug-2016/ 

Instructional Designers

Instructional Designers in Faculty Success design and present learning solutions to continually enhance institutional and instructor performance. We collaborate closely with instructors to translate course objectives into meaningful, customized courses tailored to each instructor’s specific needs, leveraging an aptitude for design and development, along with excellent problem-solving and analytical skills. 

Our technical expertise encompasses a range of programs and best practices, including Canvas, Quality Assurance, Universal Design, and more. Instructional Designers meet with academic components to answer questions about teaching and learning in one-on-one consultations, small group work, symposia, and workshops.

Technical Support

To request technical support, submit a Technology Service Desk email to start a ticket.