Building confidence and closing gaps: The final steps to meaningful feedback

Blog post 4 of 4 | Principles 5, 6, & 7 of Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick (2006) in action

Theories of motivation in learners tell us that when students feel competent, they feel motivated to keep going. Our feedback is a crucial tool in building that feeling of competence. When our feedback is focused on what was missed or what was wrong, we’re reinforcing a sense of inadequacy.  In contrast, feedback that reflects a gap, rather than a lack, shows students what they’re aiming for without suggesting that they can’t get there. The two big pedagogical ideas that I find helpful here are Vygotsky’s notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (described in Eun, 2019), and Dweck’s Growth Mindset (2006).

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is all about the sweet spot of learning. If the task is too easy or basic, we lose interest. Ifthe task is too challenging, and we just can’t do it, even with guidance, then we get discouraged and turned off. Between these two extremes is the ZPD: when we’re in the zone, we can accomplish challenging tasks that build on what we’ve already learned.

I’ve recently taken up weightlifting, and it’s the perfect illustration of the ZPD. Each week, my goal is to try just a little more weight. Last October, I managed 120 lbs on the barbell hip thrust. This week, I hit 230 lbs. If I had tried to lift 200+ lbs in October, I would have failed, and possibly injured myself. I would have felt inadequate and out of my depth. But adding just a few more pounds every week worked. Each time I add, I feel strong and capable.

Dweck’s Growth Mindset works along the same lines: the mantra is “I can’t do this… yet.” So right now, I can’t lift 250 lbs… yet. Because I’ve been seeing the progress steadily, though, that “yet” doesn’t discourage me at all.

The final three feedback practices in this series are all about using our feedback to give students a sense of forward momentum, based in competence and progress.

Principle 5 - Encouraging Positive Self-Perception

Why this matters

The principles covered in my previous posts—self-assessment, feedback literacy, dialogue—are essential in laying out our expectations, and in helping students see their work in relation to those expectations. With the fifth principle, we’re adding a layer of self-perception: showing students not only how their work aligns with our expectations, but also how it demonstrates their competence and progress.

Years ago, as a new teacher, I spent hours painstakingly creating intricate analytic rubrics for my writing assignments. For each assignment, I identified specific elements (thesis statement, paragraph structure, citations, grammar, and so on) and then described the range of performance: excellent paragraphs have a clear topic sentence connected to the thesis of the paper, smooth internal transitions, the perfect number of examples, and a solid concluding sentence. Satisfactory paragraphs have a topic sentence that is… mostly(?) connected to the thesis, good transitions, one too many or too few examples, and a reasonable concluding sentence. Paragraphs that need work are missing one or more of these elements. And so on. My expectations and standards were crystal clear.

Or were they? What does “smooth” mean? What’s the “perfect” number of examples? And what about the paragraphs that are excellent except for the number of examples? I found myself bogged down by my own criteria, trying to find the exact right grade point for each element. And while my rubrics were detailed and students found them helpful, they also managed to use them to challenge grades, and ultimately, I found the rubrics made students focus on minutia rather than really understanding the relationship between my standard and their production.

Then I found the Single Point Rubric.

The Single Point Rubric (SPR) revolution

Analytic rubrics describe levels of proficiency (excellent > satisfactory > weak > unacceptable). The Single Point Rubric (SPR) is still criterion-based, but the rubric descriptors are focused only on the expected standard of performance. Essentially, we strip away everything but the “Excellent” column. So now, rather than try to find four different adjectives to describe different levels of paragraph production, I can describe what an excellent paragraph looks like, then use my feedback to show students the relationship between what they wrote and what they’re aiming for. While it may seem more all-or-nothing, in practice, the SPR allows for more nuance: now I can laud the strong topic sentences and transitions, and challenge the writer to work on the use of examples.

[If you’re new to the different kinds of rubrics, this is an excellent starting point.]

Benefits of SPRs

Gonzalez (2014, 2015) and Chao (2020) have argued that the benefits of SPRs include:

• Better quality feedback because teachers can focus their remarks on specific problems and on ways in which the student has surpassed expectations;
• Clearer objectives and standards, which support more effective peer and self-assessment;
• Fewer words, which means that they are quicker and easier to create, and easier to understand;
• More flexible interpretations of the criteria, which means that teachers do not need to anticipate how students might deviate from the expected standard.

In terms of self-perception—that feeling of competence so essential to motivation—SPRs validate progress and strengths, not just deficits. Students see what they’re doing well and where to improve.

Visit Jennifer Gonzalez's version of the Single Point Rubric from her website The Cult of Pedagogy (2014).

Like the more detailed analytic rubrics, you can make the SPR work for your own courses and individual assignments. In my own courses, I use a simplified version of the SPR, in which I describe what constitutes excellence for a given criterion. My feedback then focuses on how the student’s work compares to that description. In Moodle, I set up my SPRs using the Marking Guide. Here’s an example of what it looks like:

2 Moodle Marking Guide from my own ENGL 213 course.

Principle 6 - Providing Opportunities to Close the Gap

Scaffolded drafting and revision

If we want students to focus on the “not yet,” our feedback has to give them chances to improve. Feedback without an opportunity for revision is just evaluation, not learning.

Perhaps the most effective and most obvious way to provide students with opportunities to close the gap between performance and learning goals is through scaffolded stages of drafting and revision. In my own practice, most major assignments involve multiple submission stages with feedback in various forms at each stage.

When I taught English courses at the Cégep level, for instance, students wrote three essays over fifteen weeks. Each essay involved planning, outlining, drafting, and revising prior to submission.

For Essay #1, this was a long, deliberate process:

1. Five weeks before submission: we did a thesis-building activity in class, and students submitted a one-page form on which they explained in their own words what my essay prompt meant, what their thesis was in response to the prompt, what three supporting points they planned to use, and what their biggest concern was at this stage. They got this back, with my feedback, in the next class.
2. Based on my feedback on their forms, they prepared an outline or concept map (their choice) in class.
3. Four weeks before submission: using their previous, they worked in small groups to provide feedback on each other’s outline.
4. Three weeks before submission: they wrote an in-class draft of the essay, and submitted their draft, original form, and outline/concept map. I provided feedback on the draft.
5. Two weeks before submission: I met each student one-on-one (we did not meet as a class this week) for a 15-minute discussion. Students were instructed to bring their draft and all previous work, as well as two questions to get the conversation started. We used this time to probe their ideas, dig deeper, realign any misconceptions, and strategize for their final edit.
6. Submission.

Subsequent essays were a lot less intensive: for Essay #2, we did the thesis planning and in-class draft, but the outline and meeting were optional. By Essay #3, we did only the thesis planning form. By that stage, however, students saw the value in the peer and instructor feedback, and sought each other out, and met with me, as part of their process.

The power of peer feedback

As is clear from Essay #1, scaffolded assignment make the task much more manageable—but perhaps less so for the instructor. This is why peer feedback is woven into the scaffolded process. Peer review, whether as part of the scaffolded process or more generally, is an invaluable part of meaningful feedback:

• It fosters collaboration and engagement.
• Students learn from one another and help one another navigate assignments and material.
• The skills they develop in providing helpful feedback to their classmates prepare them for providing and using feedback in future.
• Peer feedback adds a natural step to the writing process that some students might be tempted to skip.
• Because they are accountable to their peers for submitting draft work and providing feedback, they develop parallel skills and are better prepared for their final submission (Debby Ellis Writing Centre, 2022).

We can’t just give them 15 minutes in class and say “give each other some feedback.” Good peer review is a skill that must be taught - Students need protocols, guidelines, and practice.

For my peer reviews, I use the same descriptors from my SPR to create peer-assessment guidelines. This is easy to do in class, and I have used Moodle’s Workshop module as well. The Workshop module, which should perhaps be relabeled as a peer review activity, is a tool that requires significant time and thought to set up and manage. But when planned well, the Workshop, like most forms of peer assessment, helps students see the connections between course content, assessment, and their own work.

Principle 7 - Extrapolating Information to Move Forward

Two facets of extrapolation

Extrapolating information can be understood in two facets: reflective practice (internally focused extrapolation) and progress tracking (externally focused).

Progress tracking in the digital workspace

Tracking cohort progress is, arguably, easier in the digital workspace than on paper. Course management systems such as Moodle allow us to produce myriad reports to explore different trends, and the truly reflective practitioner can generate side-by-side comparisons for members of a single cohort, multiple iterations of related assessments, different sections of the same course, and different cohorts in the same course over time.

As teachers, though, one aspect of our feedback and assessment practice should be internally focused: what is our students’ performance on a given assessment telling us about our teaching? About our approach? About our assessment design? I often tell the story of teaching a masters-level course on assessment, and giving the students this scenario: “imagine you’ve just given your high school students a test, and half of them failed. What does this tell you?” The responses were what I was expecting. Some said the test was poorly designed. Some said the results suggested they needed to better prepare the class. Some said study guides or test reference sheets would help. And then one student said “I teach math, and that’s just how it is—not everyone is going to pass.”

We need to shift our own thinking to the Growth Mindset. Believe that “not everyone is going to pass” and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Believe that a 50% failure rate indicates a problem with the test, not the test-takers, and you become a better teacher.

Bringing it all together

All seven principles point to the same truth: feedback works when it opens a conversation between what students are producing and what they're aiming for. The key word is “conversation.” In the higher education learning environment, students can feel isolated and remote from their peers and their teachers (Al-Maskari et al., 2022; Lemay et al., 2021). In consciously embracing best practices in assessments and feedback, teachers naturally rely on—and create—open channels of communication that support and motivate online learners.

Feedback is, of course, the essential ingredient in this approach to assessment, beginning with the understanding that feedback can, and should, occur at every stage of assessment, from explanations of the tasks and expectations to final feedback and evaluation.

Incorporating peer- and self-assessment strategies creates engagement, provides feedback from multiple perspectives, and supports peer communication in the online learning environment. Inviting discussion of the assessment and the feedback given and received fosters a sense of ownership and accountability in students and assures them that teachers are accessible and open to dialogue. Most importantly, feedback should encourage students and inform practice through dialogue and reflection.

You don’t have to implement major changes or change every aspect of your feedback and assessment practice. Having a clear idea of why you want to build that practice, and, just like our students, embrace the Growth Mindset. Start with what resonates most or what addresses your biggest challenge, and build your practice over time.

References

Al-Maskari, A., Al-Riyami, T., & Kunjumuhammed, S. K. (2022). Students academic and social concerns during COVID-19 pandemic. Education and Information Technologies, 27, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10592-2

Chao, C. I. (2020). Validity evidence to explore the educational impact of using a single-point rubric in interprofessional education [Master’s thesis, University of Alberta]. University of Alberta Education and Research Archive. https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/480114b9-2594-4341-8ce8-30ac094cce82/view/58146b93-756e-44ee-ae42-518712afb1d6/Chao_Cheng_In_202009_MSc.pdf

Debby Ellis Writing Center. (2022). Benefits of peer review. Southwestern University. https://www.southwestern.edu/offices/writing/faculty-resources-for-writing-instruction/peer-review/benefits-of-peer-review/

Barohny Eun (2019) The zone of proximal development as an overarching concept: A framework for synthesizing Vygotsky’s theories, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51:1, 18-30, DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2017.1421941

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset : the new psychology of success (1st ed). Random House.

Gonzalez, J. (2014, May 1). Know your terms: Holistic, analytic, and single-point rubrics. Cult of Pedagogy. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/holistic-analytic-single-point-rubrics/

Gonzalez, J. (2015, February 4; updated 2017). Meet the single point rubric. Cult of Pedagogy. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/single-point-rubric/

Lemay, D. J., Bazelais, P., & Doleck, T. (2021). Transition to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 4, Article 100130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2021.100130

Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090

Wilson, J. (2018). Write outside the boxes: The single point rubric in the secondary ELA classroom. Journal of Writing Assessment, 11(1), 1–9. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9175z7zs

SciSpace was used to support the literature search, reference verification, and structural drafting of this post. All ideas, examples, and professional reflections are my own.

Note from the CTL: We’re grateful to Professor McDonnell for contributing her excellent four-part series on the seven principles of effective feedback. If you’d like to contribute to our blog, please contact teaching@concordia.ca. At the CTL, we have resources to further help you explore elements of feedback and assessment for learning. These include

• Assessment for learning
• Develop rubrics
• Giving feedback
• Grading group work

We hope you explore them and if you’d like to discuss your specific context, reach out for a one-on-one consultation.