First, Hattie’s article provides valuable insight to me as it has given me a new perspective to think about this important construct, the feedback. Undoubtedly, I agree with Hattie that feedback significantly influences the achievement of a student in attaining the learning outcomes.
I believe that to some extend I am actually following Hattie’s recommendations but was not aware exactly what he proposed. The learning gap, where a student is right now and where he meant to be, can be addressed using three question which Hattie suggested was unknown to me. In online teaching environment sometimes, it is sometimes difficult to understand student’s goals, his expertise in the pre-requisite course material, his level of motivation etc. This leads to the situation where customized feedback is very difficult to provide. However, there is always room for improvement and Hattie’s recommendation will help me to improve my feedback in my future online course. I will ensure to provide feedback by keeping in mind the proposed questions like, where students are heading? How are they going? And where they go ahead to achieve the course objectives?
Further, I believe that I need to seek some more introduction from students like what is the purpose of taking the course and what are their expectations from the course. This will help me to provide constructive and more importantly customized feedback to the students.
Thank you for posting your ideas regarding Hattie’s work. You have helped me move my own understanding and application of better feedback forward. I wonder exactly how much the student’s own perceptions of “where they are meant to be” will affect their reception and acceptance of our feedback. What thoughts do you have in this regard?
Thanks for your message. I think most of the students need our guidance and what the answer of this question from instructors. However, few students who have the deep learning approach have fair bit of idea about their destination once they finish up the assignment or even the course. In fact they need more work to be assigned to them as they set higher goals for themselves. I have come across such students in my teaching career. Sometimes I set different parameters for such students for the same assignments. When you provide them feedback they question you a lot and analyze the feedback and answers to the instructors more carefully. As an instructor you need to work more closely with such students as they can even question your feedback. They are there to attain knowledge rather good grades.