Suggestions for Providing Helpful Feedback
- Pointing out strengths is helpful feedback, and being helpful does not mean that you cannot raise issues of concern. The most effective feedback is a conversation that identifies both particular strengths of the instructor and issues to think about and work on within the context of a particular group of students in a particular course. Helpful feedback is always embedded in context.
- Helpful feedback is descriptive and specific. General comments (“That was great!”) make a person feel good but are not useful in developing teaching skill. Descriptive comments tied to specific events in class are much more helpful.
- Helpful feedback expresses the experience of the observer in the class, what she or he learned, her or his emotional response (intimidated, enthused, intrigued, bored). Observers from outside the instructor’s discipline are often well situated to describe the student experience, and information about the observer’s response to the class can be very useful to instructors.
- Helpful feedback does not include judgmental comments. Such comments are best avoided by starting sentences with “I” rather than “You.” Statements that begin with “I” and describe the observer’s experience allow the instructor to decide what to do with the information.
- Helpful feedback focuses on observed behaviors that a person can do something about rather than on the person.
- Helpful feedback is checked for consistency. In situations where more than one person is observing a class, feedback should be checked with other observers to determine the extent of agreement about a particular experience or observation.
These suggestions were exerpted from "A Class Visit Model", by Rick Holmgren, Allegheny College.