Helping Your Students Use Their Feedback: Insights From Central Services

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This session is primarily aimed at academic staff who teach students and provide them with feedback. It would also be helpful for staff such as programme directors, Support centre administrators and others who are contacted by students about their feedback, as it will look at ways in which they could help students use their feedback effectively.

Working in central support services (Study Advice and Student Wellbeing Services) gives us unique insights into how students regard their feedback. As we are not the ones marking their work, they can be candid with us when they don’t quite understand the comments or interpret them in ways that cause them worry and stress. Therefore, we can provide the student perspective: how they interpret the feedback which often is what causes them stress and prevents them from using the information provided to learn and make progress.

We can also give advice to staff on how best to provide feedback, phrases to use that will encourage students to take action, guidance on what to do next to improve.

We have seen trends in all year groups of how students’ focus is increasingly on the grade, their fear to receive feedback, and the negative impact it has. We are trying to shift the focus to feedback being a useful tool for learning and development.