Welcome to day 3 of Five Days of Feedback!

Last year, the University's NSS Assessment and Feedback Expert Group identified the 5 qualities of good feedback.

We will be using these qualities as part of our Five days of feedback event in the week commencing 11th December. Every day, we will share case studies and top tips focusing on each of these qualities of good feedback in turn by email, on X and on LinkedIn.

The theme of today’s ‘5 days of feedback’ event is Consistent. 

Good feedback is consistent across the whole module, ensuring individual markers are giving similar types of feedback and levels of detail to all students, and that differences in approach between assessors are picked up during moderation. 

How do you write consistent feedback? 

One way to ensure your feedback is consistent is to use a model when writing your feedback to students – either individually, or across a marking team. Alongside Hattie et al.’s (2021) model introduced on Day 1, and the TEDM framework introduced on Day 2, you might want to consider the trifle model. It is a development of the ‘feedback sandwich’ model (in which you give a learner one piece of ‘negative’ feedback for improvement, sandwiched in between two pieces of positive feedback), but does not shy away from really focusing on what needs to be improved and, crucially, how to improve. It has three parts: 

• What worked – tell the learner one (or more) areas of their work that were successful, and why, so they know what to keep doing in future 
• What didn’t work – Give one or two specific examples in their work that were less successful, and explain why (using the marking criteria to help you) 
• How to fix it – Provide at least one specific instruction to guide the learner moving forward. 

An example – ‘I really liked your use of paragraphs in this essay, they were very clear. However, your referencing contained errors that made it difficult to understand what literature you had used in different parts of your discussion. To improve, I recommend that you revisit guidance on how to reference literature in your writing, and check that your in-text references are clear and consistent.’ 

What does consistent feedback look like to students? 

We asked our Student Experience Officers and Graduate Business Partners what consistent feedback looked like to them as a student. They said:  

‘Consistency for me also meant consistency across the programme. So many times, one marker said one thing, I made the change, and the next marker gave me negative feedback on it. This is really frustrating as a student.’ 

Additional resources: 

• Case study from Dr. Stephen Boyne, Lecturer in Management on marking and giving feedback in teams on the Education Toolkit 
• A review of feedback models and typologies by Ernesto Panadero and Anastasiya Lipnevick in Educational Research Review 

Don’t forget to add your good feedback practice to our Padlet! 

We are also running an online Q&A session on 14th December 1-2pm on How ELE2 and the Turnitin Feedback Studio can facilitate good feedback. If you would like to attend, email eduexe@exeter.ac.uk.