Professor David Nicol of the University of Glasgow designed a general instructional method to implement inner feedback in a course. It broadly consists of embedding a sequence of multiple sequential comparisons with guiding questions, to the development of student paper, analysis, research, writing, product, presentation or assignment. This can be done in or out of class. This is a scalable process for all students without any increase in lecturer commenting.
Feedback you generate yourself is more effective than comments after completion
Generating feedback in this way has arguably more effect on what students learn than the relatively sparse and intermittent comments by teachers or peers they receive after their work is completed. Student’s learning is improved by calling upon their natural inner feedback capability and develop in that way their critical and creative thinking. It is consistent with the long-term purpose of feedback in higher education, which is to help students develop the capacity to regulate their own learning, unaided by lecturers.
We encourage you to read David Nicol’s Active Feedback Toolkit for a more in-depth description of the method. Below we give four essential tips for successful implementation.
Tip 1: formulate your comparison instructions to reflect back on the student’s own work
- When students do the comparison, formulate specific instructions to give a focus for the comparison, e.g., “How did your essay differ from this essay? What did you learn from that difference? How would you improve your own essay?”, or “How did your thinking differ from the expert? What did you learn from that? What questions remain outstanding? Use a flow-chart diagram to self-correct your work.”
- So make the outputs explicit (e.g., writing, discussion with others, visually in a diagram, use in next task, updating work).
- This output should form part of the final product.
- To make your instruction even better you can formulate your instructions as specific open-ended questions with a focus on the desired learning outcomes. This promotes feedback on critical thinking (e.g., “How does the analytical framing in this published article change your thinking relative to the framing you used to create your own report?”).
Tip 2: stage the comparison information across the course (start with material comparisons, amplify with peer comparisons)
Choose an order and timeline by which the students do the comparisons and improve their product step-by-step. Stage the comparison information across the course. The more comparisons students make, the more they build their own feedback and learn. Different comparators generate different kinds of feedback. Start with material comparisons (e.g., documents, videos and observations) then amplify with peer comparisons. This goes way beyond peer learning or peer review.
Tip 3: vary the comparison information across the course
Select or create appropriate comparators. For example: a lecture, a knowledge clip, an article, a documentary, an animation, an AI- generated version of the task, best/worst-practices, guidelines, analogous problems, assessment rubrics, AI- generated feedback, news articles, blogs, art.
Similar item comparison and dissimilar item comparison
The tip is to vary the comparison information across the course. Switch between similar item and dissimilar item comparisons. Each has its own merits. In the first, students compare what they produce against similar items (e.g., an essay against other essays) whereas in the second they compare against something different (e.g., a written explanation against a video presentation). Switching the comparison lens keeps students engaged but also promotes perspective shifting and knowledge elaboration.
Similar item comparison (often called exemplars) enables students to generate feedback to improve the standard of their work. However, exemplars don’t need to be on the same topic. When the topic is different, students will look beyond the content and generate feedback on the deep structure (e.g., identify ways of improving its structure and argument of an essay). When the topic is in the same domain but not identical, the feedback students generate will move them forward, resulting in knowledge elaboration.
Dissimilar item comparison
Dissimilar item comparison helps students view the work they have produced through different lenses (e.g., written explanation of a process against a flow-chart diagram of the same process).
These comparisons help students connect the abstract to the concrete (e.g., theory-practice), to see their work from different vantages and to build more elaborate knowledge and understanding.
Tip 4: decide on how to amplify the feedback students generate
Decide on the next step: how to amplify the feedback students generate from resources. Ask the students to update what they produced, based on their comparison with new information. Or to write down what they learned or the questions it raised for them.
Going further, they might discuss their learning with peers. Include this information in the comparison instructions and instructions to develop their own product.
Sources
- Nicol, D. 2022. “Turning Active Learning into Active Feedback”, Introductory Guide from Active Feedback Toolkit, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow
- Guiding learning by activating students’ inner feedback | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect (timeshighereducation.com)