Ways to give effective feedback on EE/IA
Providing feedback is a process of conveying information about the quality of product. It helps the student in understanding the requirements of the work. It can improve student’s confidence, enthusiasm and motivation of learning.
In IB curriculum teachers, are always required to give feedback on the student’s work, to help them understand their strengths and weaknesses. This feedback should be in the form of scaffolding to ensure that student does not receive more than required feedback to complete the task. This is the most challenging part for a teacher. They are only supposed to give one written feedback on the draft and then expect the final work. Therefore, the quality of this feedback determines the outcome of the project.
According to Black and William (1998) Feedback to any pupil should be about the particular qualities of his or her work, with advice on what he or she can do to improve, and should avoid comparisons with other pupils.
This first and last written feedback on students work should be effective. It should be easy for student to understand and interpret to take positive action. The feedback should be in simple, short, clear and in the form of guiding questions. For this, here are some scenarios and sampler guiding questions that can provide effective feedback to students:
If a student write an unclear statement:
Avoid only underlying the statement or just writing words like
? Explain Not Clear
Ask guiding questions like:
- Why do you think this is possible?
- How did you reach to this conclusion?
- What are you trying to explain in this statement?
- Is your statement clear? Please check
- Is your statement making good connection with previous and next statement?
If student forgot to cite the information/ incorrectly cite/ you have doubt on authenticity of information:
Annotate the work using questions like:
- From where did you get this information?
- Do you think the information is taken from a reliable resource?
- Did you verify this information from other sources?
- Are you following academic honesty?
If student miss some data or data in incorrectly processed:
Question the student by writing:
- Please check this page
- Do you think you have mentioned everything that is required?
- Do you think you have considered sufficient data required for conclusion?
- Check calculation.
If student miss some of the assessment criteria strands:
Make him/her read the strands again by asking questions like:
- Did you check your work against the assessment criteria?
- For criteria …….. do you think you have met all the strands?
- What more can you do in criteria …….. to show better understanding?
If student have done something great don’t miss a chance to motivate him/her:
Motivation makes student progress faster so don’t miss the opportunity, always praise by saying
- This point shows good critical thinking
- You show good understanding of criteria…….
- The diagrammatic representation gives clear indication of methodology.
- You show good ICT skills
- This point strengthens the understanding.