Using your Feedback

Receiving feedback 

Receiving feedback from an assessed piece of work can be an emotional experience. You will probably have invested a great deal of time and effort into your work, and it can be very hard to receive feedback.

 It can also be tempting to ignore feedback, but using it can help you develop your work in future.

 Feedback closes the loop on your assignment, and completes the chain of actions related to that piece of work. Generally, there are two types of feedback:

Summative feedback: gives you an overall rating for your work. This is usually a mark, but it can also

come in the form of comments within your marked work.

Formative feedback: can give you advice on how to improve your work next time.

What feedback should show you:

•  What you did right (and why)

•  Where you can improve for next time

•  How your understanding of what makes a “good” answer can be improved

Tips for dealing with negative feedback

Tip 1: Remember that the feedback is about the work, and not about you personally.

Tip 2: After a few days of reflection, you should find that you are in a better position to approach

your feedback, and to build on it for next time.

Understanding your feedback

Feedback on assessed work can range from single words to in-depth comments. You may agree or disagree

with your feedback, or even be unable to read it. You might receive comments like these:

Each of these points could be very useful in the right context, but it is important to make sure you understand your feedback. If you are not sure what your feedback means, you can speak to your course team. 

Your Academic Skills Tutor can also help you interpret and use your feedback, but it is best to speak to your markers if you have specific questions about what their feedback means.

Feedback action plan

Stella Cottrell (2019) suggests that after receiving feedback, it can be a good idea to use an action plan

to improve your work in the future. Here’s how:

1) Read through your work, referring to the tutor’s comments. Be constructive, and keep asking yourself, "How can this help me to improve my work?". After each comment, check whether you understand what made your tutor write it.

2) If you are not sure what the comments mean, speak to a course tutor as soon as you can.

3) Highlight any comments that you feel are useful to you for your next piece of work.

4) Take a piece of paper and divide it into two columns:

- Major issues: areas which lose a lot of marks, such as not answering the question, lack of evidence, poor argument, weak structure

- Minor errors: spelling, punctuation, grammar and general writing style.

5) Go through your tutor’s comments, listing them under these categories. In future, you can compare this with previous pieces of work, to see whether any issues keep occurring.

6) Number the items in order of priority (with ‘1’ for the most urgent matter to work on). If you have concerns, make sure you see your Academic Skills Tutor or your course tutor.

Finally...

Try to address one issue at a time, and your academic performance should improve throughout your time at university.