Using your feedback

Feedback is a vital learning tool that is essential to your improvement and development. It’s important to use the feedback you receive to improve your future assignments. We call this feeding forward.

Types of feedback

Not all your feedback will be written comments on an assignment. There are many types of feedback at university – formal and informal – and tutors will use different ways to help guide you to improve your work.

Feedback may be verbal in tutorials, seminars or lectures, or it could be delivered to a whole group by email, through Minerva or using model answers.

Seek and reflect on feedback

Being an independent learner means not only using the feedback you're given directly, but also being on the look-out for and actively seeking feedback whenever you can.

Review and reflect on any feedback you receive, then make an action plan to feed it forward to your next assignment.

What's in our guide

The feedback guide on these webpages looks at five feedback areas that are common to many students:

• Structure and coherence of academic writing: includes introductions and conclusions, paragraphs, transitions and signposting.
• Research and referencing: includes selecting and evaluating information, citations and references.
• Criticality and argument: includes analysis, critical thinking and developing an argument.
• Language and style: includes using an academic voice, paraphrasing, summarising and using quotations, grammar, spelling and proofreading.
• Understanding and content: includes analysing and answering the question, demonstrating your understanding of the topic.

Each section includes typical comments from tutors and suggest ways to feed these forward.