Halfway Feedback and Recommendations
How should I record my feedback and recommendations?
No matter how much emphasis students tend to place on ratings, these are only half the story. Ratings must go hand in hand with feedback. It is usually the feedback that gives students the clearest idea of what is needed for continued improvement.
"I think because the items and domains are quite nicely differentiated... it just makes you able to give clearer feedback." - Practice Educator
With this is mind, a primary emphasis of the SPEF-R2© is to provide constructive and detailed feedback. Comments relating to each of the relevant learning objectives are recorded in the Feedback/Recommendations section, immediately following the corresponding item bank.
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Your student is more likely to be able to modify behaviour if your feedback is:
- specific
- objective and
- indicates clearly what behaviour change is necessary for improvement.
Keep handy the notes you have taken of your student's performance so that you can describe specific examples of what you mean. You may like to phrase your comments either as current behaviours or desired behaviours.
An example:
Instead of saying you felt your student "lacked confidence when speaking with co-workers" you may say that during staff meetings you observed that they:
- spoke quietly so that people had to lean forward to hear
- tended to only look at notes when speaking
- usually only contributed to discussion when their opinion was specifically sought
Recommendations naturally flow from here, and you might encourage your student to come up with some suggestions. In the previous example, your combined feedback might include comments such as:
During staff meetings I/you need to
- speak at a comfortable volume for my listeners
- give my co-workers some sustained eye-contact
- take the initiative to offer pertinent information at appropriate times
For more ideas about wording feedback you may like to revisit A Feedback Formula from Module Two.