On the Benefits of Delayed Feedback: or, ‘Have you marked our work yet?’

Whenever my students complete a piece of written formative work for me, whether that be a full essay or a single paragraph, the question I will inevitably hear from them during the next lesson is: ‘Have you marked our work yet?’ Indeed, much of the research supports this need for instant feedback. Irons (2008), for example, repeatedly suggests that ‘timely’ (or immediate) feedback enhances the relationship between teachers and students. This is true, but I would argue that this enhanced relationship partially comes through giving the students what they want, as opposed to what is most beneficial to ensuring that they learn.

The Education Endowment Foundation supports this teacher autonomy regarding the timing of feedback, encouraging teachers to:

Judge whether more immediate or delayed feedback is required, considering the characteristics of the task set

But what constitutes delayed feedback? In research on the benefits of immediate versus delayed feedback, Butler and Woodward (2018) made the excellent point that: it is difficult to conclude the optimal amount of time to leave before giving feedback on a piece of work, as definitions of what constitutes immediate and delayed feedback vary greatly: for example, definitions of delayed feedback vary between a delay of a few seconds to a delay of months.

The Education Endowment Foundation encourage teachers to 'judge whether more immediate or delayed feedback is required, considering the characteristics of the task set'

When I take in a piece of formative written work from students (from Key Stages 3 to 5), my rule of thumb is to return it to them one week later: I make my students aware of this from the beginning of the academic year and remind them at each formative assessment point. This formative work will generally focus on longer texts that we are studying; this means, therefore, that at least some of the intervening lessons between the time the assessment is completed and when it is returned will remain focused on that text.

Two studies highlight the benefits of delayed feedback to formative assessment. Both Carpenter and Vul (2011) and Burianek et al. (2014) argued that the delay of a few seconds gave students some time to think about their responses and anticipate others. The former study used the term preparedness, as students could think further about and reflect on the answers they produced before receiving feedback. I believe that the argument of these two studies, albeit focused on delayed feedback of just a few seconds, can be applied to my longer delayed feedback period of one week; this delay provided pupils with beneficial reflection and critical thinking time.

It is important to consciously plan how and when to give feedback

In lessons that fall between a formative assessment being completed and being returned, I actively remind my students to anticipate the return of their written work. I do this by ensuring that some of the new material I teach from the text in those intervening lessons can be related to the topic of the formative assessment in some way. An example of this can be taken from my Fourth Form class. During the Autumn term, the class explored Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, for which they completed a formative essay on Act One. In between the assessment and the feedback, some of the moments covered in Act Two of the play related to their previous essay question, which was about the play’s protagonist. I reminded students of the essay question by showing it on the board, and asked: “How could this scene have been useful in the essay you wrote?” I then gave the students several minutes to consider this question and jot down ideas with a partner. The delay in giving the students’ feedback for a week was beneficial here, as it enabled them to relate new material to an assessment they had already completed, thus encouraging them to think about additional points they could have made. The task also encouraged retrieval practice by activating recall of information from their long-term memory, thereby strengthening their understanding of the topic overall.

I reminded students of the essay question by showing it on the board, and asked: “How could this scene have been useful in the essay you wrote?”

For this essay on Act One of A View from the Bridge, the students had a scaffolded essay plan handout that they completed themselves; they also had access to it during the formative assessment. Following the first task described above, I then asked the students to recall the points they made in the essay – referring to their plans only if they needed to remind themselves - to consider whether the new material studied from Act Two would have been more relevant to their formative assessment than the points that they used from Act One. Before the students received specific feedback on their formative assessment, they were beginning to evaluate whether they could have approached it differently with other learned material. In addition, whilst the boys were being taught new information about the text, they were using it to consolidate their knowledge of the section of text they had already learned. In these intervening lessons, then, I took Carpenter and Vul (2011) and Burianek et al.’s (2014) arguments regarding the benefits to learning of delayed feedback by giving students a few seconds’ thinking time between submitting an answer and receiving feedback, and embedded it into my planning over the longer period of one week.

Pupils still receive immediate feedback throughout each lesson

In Burianek et al.’s work (2014), the researchers linked delayed feedback to curiosity. They asked their test subjects to reflect on the previous task and select how curious they were about knowing the correct answer. When giving delayed feedback, it is important to ensure that learning takes place by maintaining students’ curiosity regarding their upcoming feedback. By setting students tasks related to the formative assessment they are awaiting feedback for, they become increasingly curious to know the feedback they received on the points that they made. By building up anticipation and curiosity amongst students through utilising delayed feedback, I can ensure that the classroom environment is optimised so that learning during the feedback phase will take place.

My advice - despite its unpopularity in some academic literature – is not to discount the teaching and learning benefits of delayed feedback and not to immediately give in to calls of: ‘Have you marked our work yet?’

References

• Burianek, S., Mullaney, K. M., Carpenter, S. K. and Grotenhuis, C. (2014) ‘Waiting for feedback helps if you want to know the answer: the role of curiosity in the delay-of-feedback benefit’, Memory and Cognition, vol. 42, pp. 1273-1284 [Online]. Available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-014-0441-y (Accessed 1 November 2024).
• Butler, A. C. and Woodward, N. R. (2018) ‘Toward consilience in the use of task-level feedback to promote learning’, Psychology of Learning and Motivation, vol. 29, pp. 1-38 [Online]. Available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0079742118300136?via%3Dihub (Accessed 3 November 2024).
• Carpenter, S. K. and Vul, E. (2011) ‘Delaying feedback by three seconds benefits retention of face-name pairs: the role of active anticipatory processing’, Memory and Cognition, vol. 39, pp. 1211-1221 [Online]. Available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-011-0092-1#citeas (Accessed 1 November 2024).
• Irons, A. (2008), Enhancing Learning through Formative Assessment and Feedback, Abingdon, Routledge.