By LISA VOTODIAN

The ability to effectively engage with feedback is a cornerstone of meaningful learning. It helps learners understand their progress, identify areas for improvement, and take actionable steps toward growth.

Instructor feedback literacy refers to the intentional design of learning environments that offer frequent and sustained opportunities for students to make evaluative judgments, generate internal feedback, and respond to various forms of feedback. Student feedback literacy encompasses an understanding of feedback and how to manage it effectively, the skills and mindset needed to use feedback constructively, and an awareness of the roles both instructors and students play in the feedback process.

These literacies are closely linked where through thoughtful design, instructors support students in developing a deeper appreciation for feedback, refining their evaluative judgment, and strengthening their ability to act on feedback.

Why feedback doesn’t always lead to growth

Students often ask for more feedback, but instructor and student perceptions of what effective feedback is can differ. Conceptually, students understand that feedback should include strategies for improvement but often prefer to receive task-focused and praise-oriented feedback.

Four broad psychological processes have been identified to help explain some of the challenges students encounter with understanding and applying feedback for improvement. Students may have difficulty in decoding feedback (interpreting academic jargon) or lack the necessary knowledge to implement feedback. They may have experienced discouragement when attempting to apply feedback in the past and are reportedly not proactive in seeking feedback or even receptive to it.

Additionally, the role of assumptions and expectations, inherit bias, and perceptions of power can inhibit a student’s ability to confidently assume an active role in the feedback process. Social and cultural background, year of study, and course format (online or in-person) also influences how students learn, perceive feedback, and interact with faculty.

Each feedback interaction is an event where interpretation, perception and power dynamics influence the way dialogue is experienced. Space (Zoom, classroom, office, email, etc.) can impact the feedback interaction. Traditional office hours and settings can be intimidating for some students. Being flexible on when and where to meet can have a positive impact on whether students seek help.

Determining when immediate or delayed feedback will be more effective is critical. Establishing continuous cycles of feedback helps build relationships and lets students know you care about their success.

More feedback isn’t better feedback

Simply providing more feedback is not the answer, and mere exposure to different types of feedback is not enough without intentional scaffolding and active interventions by instructors to help students apply feedback.  A growing body of research has emerged and identifies ways instructors and students can work together to discern barriers and improve feedback practices.

Developing a holistic approach to feedback practices that balances individualized feedback, peer feedback opportunities, and encourages students to be active participants in the process with increasing faculty workloads is challenging but “harmonizing instructor beliefs with proficient feedback practices, … can potentially enhance student learning outcomes and academic success” (Tam, 2025).

A reconceptualization of feedback as dialogic and interactive advances a more relational view of educational communication. Assessment dialogues can help “demystify the assessment process” and clarify “assumptions known to lecturers but less transparent to students.” Facilitating dialogue around exemplars, creating multiple opportunities for peer interaction, and collaborating with students to co-develop or revise assessments or assessment tools all support relational approaches that encourage discussion and clarify expectations.

Building feedback systems that support learning

Boud and Dawson’s Instructor Feedback Literacy Competency Framework identifies 19 competencies they found feedback literate instructors implement in their practice. Class level practices focus on the relational dimension of feedback that supports shared responsibilities of both instructors and students:

• Fine tuning comments to individual student needs and providing differentiated feedback support to diverse groups of students.

• Spending less time on low-level corrections and ensuring students receive usable information.

• Relating feedback to students’ self-assessments of their work.

• Posing questions that open students to new ways of thinking about their work and other ways of doing it.

• Identifying students at risk of not being able to use feedback processes well and seeking to engage difficult to involve/ marginal/ excluded students.

Time constraints, workload and class size are all considerations when designing feedback frameworks and while using AI tools for assessing student work and providing feedback offer time saving benefits and consistency, thoughtful consideration should be applied. AI feedback tools can reduce instructor-student engagement and fail to evaluate diverse writing styles and cultural expressions fairly. The University offers guidelines for using GenAI tools and recommendations for using AI in education. The GenAI Intent and Orientation Model provides a “broader framework (to) help users think more specifically about the why behind their AI-based activities.”

Incorporating all the competencies in feedback practices may not be feasible but implementing one or two will have a positive impact on student outcomes. A Feedback Literacy Scale can be used to administer pre and post surveys to measure student feedback literacy, the impact of interventions, and changes over time. Teaching Center consultants can help with designing assessment and feedback strategies.

Lisa Votodian is survey assessment manager for the University Center for Teaching and Learning.

References

Afifi, N. M., El-Sherif, D., & El-Masry, M. (2025). Towards more power-sensitive teacher’s written feedback: A critical review of authority. Insights into Language, Culture and Communication, 5(1), 120–138. https://doi.org/10.21622/ILCC.2025.05.1.1290

Boud, D., & Dawson, P. (2021). What feedback literate teachers do: An empirically-derived competency framework. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 48(2), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.1910928

Carless, D. (2006). Differing perceptions in the feedback process. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 219–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572132

Carless, D. (2020). From teacher transmission of information to student feedback literacy: Activating the learner role in feedback processes. Active Learning in Higher Education, 23(2), 143–153. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787420945845

Carless, D., & Boud, D. (2018). The development of student feedback literacy: Enabling uptake of feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), 1315–1325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354

Carless, D., & Winstone, N. (2023). Teacher feedback literacy and its interplay with student feedback literacy. Teaching in Higher Education, 28(1), 150–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1782372

Dawson, P., Yan, Z., Lipnevich, A., Tai, J., Boud, D., & Mahoney, P. (2023). Measuring what learners do in feedback: the feedback literacy behaviour scale. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 49(3), 348–362. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2023.2240983

EDUCAUSE Working Group. (2025, June 24). AI ethical guidelines. EDUCAUSE. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2025/6/ai-ethical-guidelines

Gravett, K., & Carless, D. (2023). Feedback literacy-as-event: Relationality, space and temporality in feedback encounters. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 49(2), 142–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2023.2189162

Nieminen, J. H., & Carless, D. (2023). Feedback literacy: A critical review of an emerging concept. Higher Education, 85, 1381–1400. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00895-9

Pike, D., McGowin, B., Bond, A., Cox II, L., & Williams, D. (2024, June 6). Framing generative AI in education with the GenAI intent and orientation model. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2024/6/framing-generative-ai-in-education-with-the-genai-intent-and-orientation-model

Tam, A. C. F. (2025). Unpacking teacher beliefs on feedback: Shaping multifaceted teacher feedback literacy. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2451086

Winstone, N. E., Nash, R. A., Rowntree, J., & Parker, M. (2016). ‘It’d be useful, but I wouldn’t use it’: Barriers to university students’ feedback seeking and recipience. Studies in Higher Education, 42(11), 2026–2041. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1130032