Assessment and feedback in an online context: Feedback

Moving from the classroom to online learning presents new challenges, including around assessment and feedback. Many of the principles of good feedback and assessment can still apply to the online environment, they just need to be reframed to fit this new context. Regardless of the setting, there are some key considerations around feedback that teachers need to bear in mind. Good feedback should be purposeful and meaningful and most importantly, it should give pupils a clear direction of what to do next to improve their work. The most important thing about feedback is what a pupil does with it. What does the research say? Feedback should help pupils know where they are, where they are going and how to get there (Hattie and Clarke, 2019). It is more helpful when it is given at the level of the task rather than the level of the pupil. For example ‘You are good at fractions’ will not help a pupil to understand why they have performed well on a particular task and fails to help th