Practicing feedback

Abstract

Drawing on his experience from teaching both large-scale Common Core classes and small-scale specialized architectural design studio courses, Mathew will examine the importance of getting students familiar with receiving and responding to feedback to work, and giving them opportunities to practice these skills through the use of small un-graded formative coursework exercises, before introducing larger summative assignments. Multiple feedback points distributed across the semester can facilitate good feedback practices, such as allowing: greater flexibility in the timing of feedback (notably introducing it much earlier within the course, than a traditional term paper); the use of different forms of feedback (evaluation, identification of mistakes, commentary and constructive discourse, demonstration and collaborative working etc.) tailored to the learning of skills, knowledge, applications; the use of different media to give feedback (e.g. written, verbal, graphic); the involvement of different parties in giving feedback (instructors, teaching assistants, outside experts and student peers etc.); and students time to reflect usefully on the feedback given.