Feedback that Enhances Learning

While practice is essential to learning, practice accompanied by targeted feedback is exponentially more effective. Since students may be more likely to experience cognitive overload during a disruption, being as transparent as possible about what you are looking for in an activity or assignment, why, and how, is even more important to helping students succeed (while also helping you focus your grading and feedback). The Chronicle guide How to give better feedback to your students with technology offers useful suggestions for those teaching in online or hybrid modalities.

Finally, providing students the option to revise work by incorporating feedback helps them learn from that feedback, reduces the impact of learning difficulties that result from the disruption, and may reduce the grade-related stress students are experiencing alongside the stress of a disruption. Bridging assignments that ask students to reflect on, and write about, how they will implement feedback can be valuable scaffolding that further reduces cognitive load and helps students succeed in the revision process.