Making feedback work for you
Make sure you know when, where and how you'll be getting feedback on each of the courses you're taking. The University's Feedback Standards and Guiding Principles require every course to give that information in the course handbook or course website.
Check that you're in a good position to make sense of the feedback you get — for example, you may need to refer back to the assignment guidelines, or the marking criteria, in order to 'decode' the feedback.
Take it slowly, and read it more than once — ideally with a gap in-between. It's easy to mis-read feedback the first time around, especially if you haven't done as well as you'd hoped.
There's no need to keep it to yourself. Arrange with a friend to talk through one anothers' feedback. There may be more to tease out of the feedback than what you've spotted for yourself.
Think about where, when and how you'll be able to put the feedback you get to good use. How can you best build on the strong points? And what can you do to remedy things you were less good at?
You don't have to make do with whatever feedback you happen to be given. You can actively seek out feedback. For example, you could ask your tutor to explain a feedback comment that wasn't clear to you. You could indicate, when you hand in a piece of work, what you'd most like to get feedback on. And if there's something you haven't understood in a lecture or tutorial, or something you're unsure about in a test or assignment question, ask for clarification.
You can also add to the feedback that comes your way by becoming a feedback-giver. Get together with three or four other students on the course and start a self-help group. You can give feedback to one another on plans and drafts, help one another to interpret feedback from tutors, and share ideas about how to make the most of the feedback you've got.
