This topic looks promising. I think it will be a good exercise for all of us following the course. In my group, we have decided to merge the two scenarios that were offered, and focus on the design of a course with a particular emphasis on feedback. Challenging!

My group had the meeting where we decided the work to be done on Wednesday, and on Thursday I had a group exam with my students where, after completing some questions, groups had to provide feedback to each other. I thought everything had gone alright, but after a couple of hours I received a message from one student saying that she did not want to participate in any other task involving giving feedback to other students. I was in shock! And, was it coincidence that I am supposed to do an assignment about feedback? . As you can imagine, I told her that to learn how to provide and receive feedback was an important part not only as a student, but also in her future professional career, and convinced her to participate in future feedback-type assignments. Yet, I have been thinking a lot about her message. She was complaining that after a full day of hard work (the group exam is a long assignment lasting 6 hrs…) it was not nice to make another group unhappy and upset with the feedback they had provided! After reading the feedback they had given the other group, I thought it was OK, but maybe a bit too straight forward for Swedish standards…  Clearly, next time I will give clearer instructions about how to give, but also how to RECEIVE feedback, and how to handle the information provided.

This experience made me think that we tend to focus on how to GIVE feedback a lot, but, wouldn’t it also be good to emphasize learning about how to RECEIVE feedback as well? I think so, and luckily for me many other professionals in my field (e.g. Hardavella G et al., 2017). Anyway, I hope my experience help you to consider other aspects of feedback interaction.

Thanks for reading me !

References: Hardavella G, Aamli-Gaagnat A, Saad N, et al. How to give and receive feedback effectively. Breathe 2017; 13: 327–333

Photo by: Rodrigo Fernandez-Gonzalo – CC BY-NC-ND