A comment on feedback

Today, we had a very interesting discussion with students about the importance of feedback. Some of them claimed it was really difficult to express themselves in words and suggested it could be easier or simply better to express themselves by different means.

They were slightly surprised when I produced three versions of feedback I use in my creativity courses and asked them to give feedback in a different way. First, they laughed, then, they concentrated on the task and the atmosphere changed - it resembled their normal work on word-based feedback.

We discussed the differences between different types of feedback then and majority of those who were in favour of “different” types of feedback before preferred the word-based one after that experience.

One of the conclusions of that discussion was that it is not the form but the content of feedback which is difficult: If they want to give a good and complex one, they have to invest some energy. It does not have to be necessarily hard work, but some effort must be made…..