How can you use your assignment feedback, how do you initially understand it, and what can you learn from assignment feedback?
Feedback is not all about judging you based on your academic performance, rather it’s the opportunity for you to check yourself, observe your improvement, and no one else.
When you receive your assignment from your tutor, the first you do is look at the grade. Of course, your tutor will have given you feedback with the useful purpose of helping you to understand the grade and ideas on how to improve subsequent assignments.
It’s important you use this feedback effectively in other to identify your strengths and weaknesses. We will be discussing more on how to use your tutor’s feedback to better understand your grade.
Understand the Feedback
It’s important you understand that tutors will always have different methods of sending you feedback.
Some of the feedback will provide a written summary highlighting your strength and weakness, while some will provide oral recorded feedback. The script of your work may also be given back to you with focused or itemised feedback.
Generally, tutors will send positive and critical feedback. The positive feedback is very easy to understand. The critical feedback on the other hand can sometimes be difficult to understand.
Also Read: What Are the Sociological Concepts? (Tips for Students)
How to Use Your Assignment Feedback
Engaging and accepting feedback is key to the development of students. However, research shows that a good number of students don’t use feedback to improve their learning in school.
There are several reasons for this, which include:
- A student may feel that feedback is pointless since he/she will not be doing an exercise like that again.
- The student may feel angry and unmotivated because he/she did not perform at the level expected.
- A student who performed excellently in school work may see no reason to engage with feedback because he got a good grade.
How to Use Assignment Feedback
Below are a few tips on how to use assignment feedback.
Read it, then Forget it For A While
Assignment feedback can be annoying to some students either at the undergraduate or graduate level.
Submitting a school project to your supervisor and then getting it back with red marks can be frustrating. This is something almost every college has to deal it before their work is approved.
The sleepless nights students spend trying to their school project ready in time and at the end it’s sent back with feedback can be depressing. Your school project might not be good enough for a given period.
Well, there are a few things you can do in a situation like this.
Firstly, don’t email your teacher or lecturer yet. Secondly, don’t go telling your friends negative things about your teacher or lecturer. Just forget about the situation and be in control of whatever is happening around you.
Come back to the feedback two days after it was sent to you. By then, all the emotions you had initially must have been gone. Don’t look at the mark, rather look through the feedback to identify important details you can pick out.
You took the two days period to let settle things down before sending out an email to your teacher or lecturer. The two days are the period of processing the feedback before contacting your teacher about it.
Using a Table
Creating a table and cutting and placing feedback into an orderly column is a common method used to log and store your feedback.
Most students will include a column for their grades to help them identify assignments that are likely to have feedback. The feedback will point out where the student needs to improve and areas to maintain.
Here is what the table would look like when the student starts to fill it in;
| Date of Feedback 15/07/23 | |||
| Unit and Assignment Title/Task | Positive Feedback | Improvement Points/Critical Feedback | Grade |
| Education and Society | The essay provides an excellent critical review of the literature. It contains a very good analysis of core arguments and an excellent level of interpretation. It’s a well-written essay with a clear structure. | There was scope for more use of primary sources, instead of solely relying on secondary sources. Using sub-headings would have been more useful to the reader to clearly demarcate every line of argument. Doing better proofreading would have identified some typographical errors. | 70 |
| Personal Response and Reflection | This essay indicates I am good at taking a critical approach and I will look at this essay again to understand how I used analysis and thorough review as my guide. I will put a lot of effort, into reading academic skills to get the structure right. | At first, I hadn’t realised how important reading from primary research was. I will ensure I find these and core secondary sources for future assignments. Henceforth, I will consider using sub-headings, as it would help me form an initial outline. I thought I had already proofread the work thoroughly, but it appears I didn’t do a good job because I was running out of time. | |
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Find Only Three Action Points- One Point for Praise
Sometimes there is just countless feedback to deal with. Let’s say your schoolwork has a lot of red marks on it, you need to look for only three key points which you think will work perfectly for you putting other things aside.
Below are a few key points to focus on from the onset.
Add Depth or Be More Critical
They both mean the same thing if you ever see this written in your work. This is one of the biggest assignment feedback commonly received from teachers/lecturers.
Write More Clearly
Teachers will prefer using their time to go through your work and identify where corrections are to be made, rather than trying to understand words you have written.
Not Adding Enough References
If you ever get this in your work, don’t worry as it can be fixed easily. They are only trying to ensure you include research work and sources where you obtained your information.
Start With a Growth Mindset
Possessing a growth mindset simply means you believe you have what it takes to improve and become better. Students with a growth mindset think of themselves as being in control of their future.
They go on to achieve their goals with that mindset. As a student, if you decide to approach assignment feedback with a growth mindset, you will use it to improve your performance in school.
Also Read: 12 Student-Centered Learning Examples
However, there are some unwanted thoughts you need to remove from your mind, such as;
The Teacher is a Jerk
Although this can be true sometimes not until you get the best mark in your class, the teacher is right on this one. Your performance in the classwork shows you need to improve, rather than blame the teacher.
I don’t want to Think About it
It may be too emotional for you to handle at first, so you can forget about it, and then come to it later with a clear head. Get a positive mindset that you will only improve when the best results are not coming in.
Show the Teacher How You Used the Feedback to Improve in the Next Assignment
Get your teacher’s attention and show him how you used his feedback. Show your teacher evidence that you used their feedback to improve.
Meeting with your teacher before you submit the next assignment and pointing out how you used their feedback is something you should do.
When next it’s time to show your teacher the draft for your next work, present your table during the meeting to show how you used their feedback.
Show the teacher where specifically in your paper you added their feedback.
Also Read: 15 Teaching Styles Examples
Conclusion
Engaging and accepting feedback is key to the development of students. However, research shows that a good number of students don’t use feedback to improve their learning in school.
Feedback sends a clear message to a student that “somebody cared about my work and took time to read and think about it”.
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References
- The University of Bath: Feedback on your assignments: what it is and how to use it
- HelpfulProfessor: How To Use Assignment Feedback
- Imperial College London: How to Use Your Assignment Feedback
- SM Brookhart – 2017: How to give effective feedback to your students
- B Collis, W De Boer, K Slotman – Journal of Computer Assisted …, 2001: Feedback for web‐based assignments
- M Walker – Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 2015: The quality of written peer feedback on undergraduates’ draft answers to an assignment, and the use made of the feedback
