The Seven Principles of Effective Feedback
by
Jon M. Garon

The Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education emphasize the following: active learning, time management, student-faculty contact, prompt feedback, high expectations, diverse learning styles, and cooperation among students. While all these principles have validity in the law school setting, one of the most important is effective feedback.

In law school, faculty members provide students with feedback every day. The Socratic method stresses active student participation, instant feedback and reinforcement by the professor, and the student's subsequent response, with the information loop repeating until the student learns the new skill. In a one-on-one setting, this model could be ideal; in larger groups, however, student participation tends to lessen.

To reach the entire class, the professor should create an opportunity for full participation. Professors must involve students at a level sufficient to provide feedback and reinforcement until each pupil has acquired the intended skill or knowledge. Frequent written assignments, quizzes, labs, and client projects all serve this function. The form of the activity is less important than the quality of the interaction it generates.

The key to successful instruction, then, is effective feedback and reinforcement. Feedback provides students with the information about their performance they can then use to improve their skills. Reinforcement provides positive or negative rewards to promote student response. Students often read only those portions of assignments covered because there is no positive reinforcement to do more. In this way, reinforcement can interfere with feedback. Students are given the best opportunity to meet the instructor's objectives when the instructor provides both good information, upon which the students can reflect on their learning, and explicit, positive reinforcement for demonstration of the skills the instructor is attempting to instill.

I have identified seven principles for effective feedback in legal education. While these techniques are most frequently present in legal writing and professional skills courses, they apply equally to all law school subjects.

1. Effective feedback should be clearly understood by the student. Furthermore, the feedback must be seen as something useful. Students clearly cannot reflect on information they do not understand. Instructors should provide information that builds on what the student knows. This provides students the cognitive tools needed to use the information effectively.
2. Effective feedback should be timely. It must closely follow the students' work to better help them reflect on what they did and why they did it. Reinforcement, too, must closely follow student behavior to be effective. Exams reviewed months later have far less effect than those returned the next day.
3. Effective feedback should be immediately usable by the student. If students put the feedback into practice immediately, they can build upon the information needed for the next assignment. Since students improve in small successive steps, feedback should come to the students in sequence. If it comes out of sequence, students often end up confused. The result can be frustration and negative reinforcement.
4. Effective feedback should be consistent. The feedback must build on the same themes and correct the same mistakes each time. Students compare the information they receive with their classmates to try to synthesize the information. Students also use each incidence of feedback to build toward the next project. Effective feedback is consistent from both student to student and project to project.
5. Effective feedback should be comprehensive. The feedback must cover each of the criteria set out for grading. An instructor must give value to each skill he or she wishes to improve. Grading only for analysis negatively reinforces writing skills. Students will not invest time or effort in activities that are not valued - and hence reinforced - by the instructor. The more explicit the criteria, the more they are reinforced. Further, explicit criteria help students know what to study.
6. Effective feedback should be supportive. It should encourage the student to attempt to improve. Negative reinforcement may help discourage particular behaviors, but it can also reduce motivation and disrupt the learning process. This does not mean ignoring mistakes. Instead, the instructor should identify both the weak and strong performance, and stress what the student can do to continue to improve.
7. Effective feedback should be valued. Students must recognize the value in the feedback and treat it as meaningful. When students discount feedback for any reason, its importance diminishes and so does the effect it will have. Student dislike of the subject matter, confusion about the assignment, or delays in feedback will all result in lowering the lesson's effectiveness. Students who are motivated to value feedback will engage in the learning process more intensively and utilize the information with greater effectiveness.

I recently implemented my seven principles of effective feedback while teaching Professional Skills. The students' success in the skills course led me to use this approach in my subject matter courses as well.

My method of teaching Professional Skills has three features. First, we discuss each skill explicitly in class. Course materials and discussions explore each of the component skills step-by-step. Emphasis is placed on the steps that make up writing, editing, analysis and synthesis, client counseling, negotiating, and learning. Second, the discussions of each step are presented in the context of the others. I use client counseling as a broad paradigm through which the student/lawyer demonstrates every other skill. By using a single broad paradigm, the students have a common framework that they can use to organize all their skills and techniques as lawyers. Third, course materials provide the students with written statements on each criterion used for grading. Neither the criteria nor the numerical valuations change during the semester, so students can compare their competence on each exercise. The reward system attempts to value the reflective learning as well as the substantive projects, so that students invest the necessary time in learning about their own thought processes.

By applying the seven principles of effective feedback as a guideline for designing new course problems and grading systems, instructors have the opportunity to identify the skills, values, and knowledge they truly seek from each course. Students benefit because they understand what is expected in much greater detail, and they can measure their progress toward the goal. This also provides reinforcement and feedback to the instructor. The feedback loop is continuous. The reflective process shapes not only our students, but ourselves. For me, at least, this has become a very good way to learn.