Effective and Efficient Online Feedback

Giving Efficient and Effective Feedback in an Asynchronous Online Course

Feedback is essential to student learning, but giving detailed feedback to every student on every piece of work they submit can be time-consuming, especially in an online course. In in-person courses, instructors have opportunities to provide feedback to the whole class or to groups of students during class meetings (sometimes called “global feedback”). How can we incorporate some of these same feedback strategies in asynchronous online courses to ensure that our students get the feedback they need—and we don’t find ourselves overwhelmed with responding to students’ work? This article will describe examples of global feedback, explain the value of global feedback, and provide key principles to help you provide feedback to your online students that is effective for their learning and efficient for you. 

Understanding Global Feedback

Providing global feedback is such a natural and implicit part of class meetings, you may not even realize how often and how much of this unique form of feedback students get during the average class meeting! Global feedback is the feedback you give to groups of students that helps them see more clearly where, as a whole, they are struggling, where they are succeeding, and where they need to make changes to progress in the course. This feedback helps all students by clarifying key principles and practices that are crucial for successful learning in your course. Let’s look at three common examples of global feedback in an in-person course.

• Students work in small groups in class on each stage of a large project. The instructor asks groups to share their ideas with the class, requiring groups to justify their decisions. After listening to the groups’ ideas, the instructor identifies how they are integrating key course concepts and practices effectively as well as areas where they need to refine or rethink their ideas. This helps students when they work on a second group activity.
• Students write weekly personal application essays, providing examples of how principles in the course apply to their lives. Each week the instructor anonymously shares two or three of the strongest examples with the class, pointing out the ways in which students are making good progress with difficult principles in the essays. By underscoring and sharing these productive uses of the principles, students who are struggling get new ways to understand what has been confusing them.
• In class, after students have taken an exam and received individual feedback, the instructor provides a mini-lecture clarifying a process that many students struggled with on the exam. The instructor then asks students to work in small groups on a problem that requires them to try to use that process again now that they’ve received helpful clarification. 

When we consider these examples, it becomes clear that global feedback provides important instructional, motivational, and community building purposes. Global feedback helps both the teacher and the students focus on areas of confusion and resolves those barriers to learning; this feedback is particularly helpful to learners who may struggle to process individual feedback and use it to best effect. From a motivational perspective, global feedback reassures students that they are not alone in their learning efforts. When students work with global feedback they recognize that many students are making meaningful mistakes and that the point of the course is to iron out these areas of weakness. Indeed, global feedback about areas of student struggle is never focused on an individual, so the students who are struggling don’t feel spotlighted in uncomfortable ways. This means that students may more peacefully integrate global feedback. Finally, global feedback helps students see that the instructor is thinking about the students as a learning community: the instructor demonstrates to students that she is looking at all the work the students are doing and actively looking for patterns in that learning. And keep in mind that those patterns also include the many ways that students are moving forward and succeeding: these successes should be celebrated!

As you consider the value of global feedback to students, you might be asking yourself if it is possible to create these meaningful moments of global feedback in an asynchronous course. The answer is that you can! And, in the asynchronous environment, the motivational and community building purposes of global feedback are crucial to ensure that students feel connected to you, one another, and your course. 

Global Feedback in the Asynchronous Learning Environment

Global feedback in an asynchronous course should be designed using four key principles that are most supportive for students in that learning environment. Below we outline how you can put those key principles into practice as you make plans to provide global feedback in your own asynchronous course.

Principle 1: Global feedback should follow a predictable structure

An effective asynchronous course is highly structured so that students know what to expect each week in terms of the work they are doing. Similarly, students should know when they will hear from you. Just as you should be communicating with students in a predictable pattern about what they will be doing each week, consider how you can provide global feedback each week. Consider the weekly work they are doing and decide on one or two points in the week when global feedback will provide instructional, motivational, and community building support. 

Example: Providing global feedback on discussions

Many asynchronous courses use the discussion board as a place where students can work in small groups to tackle meaningful problems and have genuine conversations about how to approach or resolve those problems using course concepts. You can read through groups’ ideas and provide a short 5-minute video that captures the strongest ideas that emerged from those conversations as well as some areas of confusion you want to clarify. You can help students see how the big ideas generated from their discussion can be applied to upcoming assignments. This global feedback can also come in the form of an announcement or an email, but consider what format you think students will best make use of. In addition, be consistent with the format you choose as this will help make each week more predictable for students. 

Example: Providing global feedback on assignments

Consider other moments in the week where global feedback would be helpful. If students submit individual assignments each week or every two weeks, provide global feedback that captures exciting progress they are making as well as areas of confusion or weakness. Hearing about the class as a whole connects students to one another and allows them to hear or see how you are processing all the work the students are doing. In this video or written message, you can include reminders about why and how this work is important to their progress in the course, helping them see the connection between assessments. 

Global feedback should happen each week at the same time: students need to hear from you each week at a predictable time to keep moving forward in the course. For example, you might provide global feedback about the discussion board through a video posted on Thursdays and post your global feedback on individual application essays or problem sets on Saturdays.