providing feedback is the third step of classroom participation after initiation and response most of the time provided by teachers or peers. however, being time-consuming can not guarantee the task effectiveness. feedback should have some other features like comprehensibility. the written feedback u provide can be really short but motivating. some times, hints are enough in written forms.Best

Ask your students if they want that kind of feedback. Provide it for those that do; then check back with them to see if they go through it after they receive it. Skip it for those that don't.

Then again, asking for, receiving, reviewing and acting upon feedback is a crucial skillset for all future professionals, much less educators. So much so, that your students should be actually assessed for it as well.

From my perspective, as a doctoral student who has also lectured, feedback is crucial. I was, as an aspiring lecturer, attempting to give gold star performance for the sake of my CV, but the students also fed back that they loved my detailed feedback and the fact I bothered to help out with grammar issues, structuring, referencing etc. which they told me no one had pulled them up on before. Some even credited me with improving these things across the board in their work.

Additionally, as a student myself, I also obsessively read and re-read the feedback I receive on my thesis chapters trying to understand and fulfil each point. So yes, I think it's worth the effort.

Thanks to those of you who have taken the time to respond thus far - there has been plenty of interest in this strand in terms of readers.

Ironically, Asterios, one of my assessment tasks has an assessment focus, whilst the other does explicitly incorporate formative peer assessment and gives the students some credit for the quality of their feedback to learning partners. I'm not sure that the consistency police and equity policies would allow me to be selective in terms of who I do and don't provide detailed feedback to.

Yes, Elizabeth, there are many students who do read feedback seriously and take the effort to digest and act upon it. And yes, the pleasure is in helping all students - undergraduate and higher degree research candidate - improve their thinking, analysis, and quality of communication.

It may only be a minority of students for whom the assessment process has become transactional and instrumental.

I don't know how 'consistency policy and equity policies' work. But they should allow opt-in/out arrangements. Forcing all-or-nothing scenarios is hardly ever useful. Students should be in a position to make informed decisions about their studies and I don't see how that's unequal footing or something.

Thank you for letting us know that many of your colleagues do not consider their students worthy of receiving the feedback which is an integral part of the faculty's job. I will not refer any of my students to the U of T. You should look for a position with a better university.

Thanks Christopher - Issues raised in this post are universal for higher education across a range of different universities in different national jurisdictions:

- the time commitment to assessing and providing feedback to students;

- increasing marking loads with the emergence of mass higher education;

- the emergence of workload models increasingly quantifying assessment workloads;

- the pressures on academics to balance teaching and research commitments;

- the extent to which some students appreciate and engage with the written feedback they receive.

Like many teacher educators I feel fortunate to love my job, be surrounded by committed colleagues and pre-service teachers, and be employed by an ethical employer with a committed civic mission within its distinctive location.

I found your response to be unnecessarily confrontational and negative.

As a student it is vital to have feedback for personal appraisal of one's performance on a given task. Especially in the on-line environment where face to face dialogue is not the norm. Feedback serves as guidance and a measure of assurance of goal attainment. Reading and research towards acquiring the knowledge, application and skills vital for the performance of the particular core interest, needs feedback for thoughts, tasks and ideas submitted. Thank you for providing that human face to the computer for your students. This virtual space can feel empty and intimidating at times, feedback help make one feel as part of a human learning community .

Thanks for this heartfelt answer, Jennifer.

It is really important that on-line students feel that they matter as individuals.

I've enjoyed setting an assignment this Semester that gives my on-line students a face. They all record instructions for an assessment task 'to camera' as if talking to children. Although I teach a mix of face-to-face and on-line students it is often the on-line students who show the most creativity and imagination in this task. In the past two days alone I have been able to award Higher Distinction grades to a student who presented flawlessly from a forest location without a script; a student who presented from an evocative futurist backdrop from 2060; and a student already working in school as a teaching assistant who enlisted Year 6 students to assist her as she set up a 'students as reporters' task. I love it when on-line students are able to transcend that feeling of the virtual space as potentially 'empty and intimidating' and cut through it to connect and communicate.

Perhaps I am answering my own question - of course the marking effort is worthwhile when students' own efforts and connection with unit material and assessment tasks is so worthy of celebration and admiration. On the other hand, it sometimes feels in marking that you have to do a lot of panning to find those gold nuggets!

Hello Peter. Remember that few years ago you were a undergradute needing for a advice of your professor. In this sense, is obviously that every minute that you invest in your students is an inverssion for their lives.

Remember that is equally important be an excellent researcher that be an excelent educator.

Best

Thanks for contributing to this strand, Rafael.

I agree that teaching offers a great opportunity to share the latest relevant research findings with students and that the best teaching is research-informed.

Peter