Feedback should be user-friendly (specific and personalised), transparent, addressable, timely, ongoing, and content-rich. It also needs to be clear, purposeful, and compatible with students’ existing knowledge, while providing little threat to self-esteem.
Feedback should not only focus on the specific learning intention or task but also provide next steps for students, letting them know where they are going in their learning.
Task-level feedback describes students’ performance on a specific task and may offer students directions on how to acquire more, different or correct information. It is best given immediately. Process level feedback focuses on how the student has completed a task or created a product. It is particularly powerful for improving students’ deep processing and mastery of tasks and directing students towards more effective task strategies. Personal level is directed to the self and contains little task-related information. This is the least effective level of feedback as it rarely leads to more engagement, enhanced self-efficacy or better understanding of the task.