How to ensure students engage with your feedback
Giving feedback is one of the most powerful tools we have as educators, but also one of the most complex. We spend hours crafting thoughtful comments, yet too often students skim through them, focus only on the grade, or never revisit them at all.
So how can we move from feedback given to feedback used?
Research in feedback literacy suggests that effective engagement depends on three key conditions:
1️⃣ Students must understand what the feedback means.
2️⃣ They must value the feedback and see its relevance to their learning.
3️⃣ They must know how to act on it.
Here are a few strategies that can help:
Make feedback dialogic.
Create opportunities for students to talk about your feedback in small groups, learning journals, or short one-to-one check-ins. When feedback becomes a conversation, students are far more likely to internalize it.
Build in reflection time.
Don’t just give feedback after the work. Give students time during lessons to process it, ask questions, and plan their next steps. For example, ask them to write a short reflection: “What’s one thing I’ll do differently next time?”
Use feedforward approaches.
Encourage students to apply your comments to their next task. This helps them see feedback as part of a continuous learning journey rather than a one-off event.
Model how to use feedback.
Show students examples of what acting on feedback looks like. Share anonymized work samples or model a revision process.
Develop feedback literacy.
Explicitly teach students what good feedback looks like, how to interpret it, and why it matters. This helps build ownership and confidence.
What strategies have helped your students engage more deeply with feedback?
Join the conversation below and share what’s worked in your context.
