Considering the Content of Your Feedback

Now that we have a shared understanding of various types of feedback, let’s consider how you can utilize these forms of feedback when working with peer mentees. Below are a few key concepts to keep in mind as you try out various types of feedback

Giving Feedback is a Skill!

Giving feedback is similar to any other skill. It is something you can always work on and continuously get better at. When giving feedback to a peer mentee for the first time, it may take some time to think about exactly what you want to suggest to the student and the best way to structure the feedback so the student will get the greatest benefit. This takes some practice - don’t put too much pressure on yourself to provide perfect feedback.

Curate a List of 3-5 Key Pieces of Feedback

While you may be tempted to provide every piece of feedback you have to a peer mentee, providing too much feedback can be overwhelming to the student. Rather than list ALL of your feedback, consider summarizing your top 3-5 key pieces of feedback somewhere near the top of the document to help contextualize the comments or notes you leave throughout the rest of the document.

Balance the Feedback

Utilize the “feedback sandwich” technique. Start with positive feedback first, followed by constructive criticism, and end with another positive remark. This approach can help maintain a mentee’s confidence while allowing them to see what they need to do to improve. It encourages them to gain a sense of perspective rather than fixate on the criticism.

Focus on Content, Not the Person

Remember to keep your feedback relevant to the content, not the person. Statements praising an individual for their personal qualities might seem like a kind piece of feedback (e.g., You’re so smart). However, only providing feedback on personal qualities gives the students little information on what they did well. On the flip side, avoid negative comments about an individual (e.g., “You always mess this up”). This kind of feedback targets the students, discourages them, and provides no guidance on how they can improve.

Be Specific

Avoid vague feedback by providing specific examples of what students did well or what they can work on. For example, if a student is giving a presentation and your feedback to them is something like:

“Good presentation. It was interesting, and I liked your slides.”

this feedback gives them very little information on how they actually did, what they did well, and what they can improve. For what reasons did you think they had a “good presentation?” What about their presentation was interesting? What about their slides did you like? A better, more specific piece of feedback might look something like this.

“You did a great job providing background and supporting evidence on each of your slides to support your research question. I was interested in your presentation because you made the presentation engaging - you did this by making eye contact with the audience and including a few questions. Your slides were well-organized and well-designed. They didn’t have too much text and were easy to follow along with.”

This feedback provides specific examples that the student can review to get an idea of what they did well. This provides them with much more information than the limited two sentences of feedback that we are often tempted to give due to time constraints or limited resources.

Be Realistic

Focus on aspects that your peer mentee has the power to change. For example, the feedback,

“Your resume needs to have more impressive experiences”

imposes an unrealistic expectation on the student. The student cannot go out and get “more impressive” experiences in the short term. This feedback focuses on something that your mentee can not adjust. Perhaps instead, you suggest strategies to amplify the experiences they already have. Instead, you might say:

“Consider using action verbs to start off your bullet points to better highlight some of the transferable skills you have developed.”

The Logistics

Feedback can come in many forms and be facilitated using a range of tools. Across this page, we have outlined some best practices and examples from both written and verbal feedback scenarios. The two most common modes to deliver feedback to peer mentors are written feedback and verbal feedback. While the core principles outlined above are relevant to both modes, consider the following practices when delivering written versus verbal feedback.

Written Feedback

As a peer mentor, you may be asked to review a mentee’s written document to provide feedback. Examples of these could range from formal written proposals, resumes, or abstracts for conferences to more informal documents like assignments or lab protocols. In any case, considering the best way to provide thoughtful feedback while also making that feedback visible to the mentee is important.

Verbal Feedback

Most often, verbal feedback is provided to students shortly after a synchronous presentation or interaction. This might occur after your mentee shares a presentation with you, describes a new idea, or engages in an in-person activity. In these instances, you often have less time to consider what feedback to provide. In these cases, you might feel pressure to “say the right thing” or provide feedback immediately. However, even when providing verbal feedback you can take time to organize your thoughts. Below, we outline a few principles to consider when you are expected to provide verbal feedback.

Focus Your Attention on the Other Person: It may seem obvious, but it’s important to make sure you pay close attention to your mentee so you can fully understand what you will be providing feedback on. This not only helps you provide thoughtful feedback but also lets your mentee know you care about what they’re sharing. Give your mentee your full attention by limiting distractions. Turn off your phone and if your laptop is not needed, close it. Jot down notes or key points to consider as you listen to your mentee.
Remember the Structure of Feedback: One helpful way to organize your feedback is through a pre-existing structure for feedback. In the case of immediate verbal feedback, the “Feedback Sandwich” approach discussed earlier in this module may help you organize your notes and thoughts into three distinct sections: what your mentee did well, areas for improvement, and encouragement.
Take Time to Reflect: When we are with others in person, oftentimes we feel a lot of pressure to respond or provide feedback immediately. However, forming an opinion and considering how to deliver feedback take some time and mental processing. This, it is okay not to respond immediately. In fact, taking a few moments to collect your thoughts and think about your response indicates that you care about the presentation and want to provide thoughtful feedback.
Follow-Up: In some cases, you may provide verbal feedback shortly after meeting with a mentee but later think of additional feedback that you wish to share with your mentee. If you think of additional feedback or need some extra time to consider a few points of feedback, let your mentee know that you will pass along additional feedback in an email or during your next check-in.

Logistics

Providing Feedback as “Suggestions”

Facilitate written feedback using tools like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Both of these tools have track changes features that allow individuals to suggest edits to documents without losing the original text entirely. They both also feature the ability to view a document’s version history so that old versions of the document can easily be seen and recovered.

Example of providing feedback as a suggestion using google docs.

Making Direct Edits to Documents

If you want to make direct edits to documents, it is helpful to check in with the mentee to ask if it is okay to directly edit their document or if they prefer feedback via comments. Avoid correcting every little mistake or grammatical error. Work to make sure what you edit is clear so your mentees can see what they might need to change or where they can improve in future work. You can do this by using “track changes” in Microsoft Word or Google Docs or by highlighting, bolding, or underlining what it is you changed. These options are available in nearly any word processor tool.

Hand-Written Feedback

In some cases, you may prefer to provide feedback on a document without using a device. This can be facilitated using the tried-and-true red ink on a printed document. Printing the document and leaving hand-written written feedback and corrections allows your mentee to clearlt see your suggestions and make edits to their electronic document as they see fit. Just make sure your handwriting is neat and legible!

How to Use the Suggesting Tool in Microsoft Word and Google Docs

Google Documents Suggesting Tool and Editing Options

How to use the Suggesting Tool in Google Docs

Microsoft Word Suggesting Tool and Editing Options

How to use the Suggesting Tool in Microsoft Word

Attributions

“Week 4: Effective Communication Skills for Team PerformanceLinks to an external site.” by The Open University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0Links to an external site.

“Best Practices Feedback”Links to an external site. by Kristin RobinsonLinks to an external site. is licensed under CC BY 4.0Links to an external site.

“Training Module on Responding to Student WritingLinks to an external site.” by Lindsey HardingLinks to an external site. is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0Links to an external site.

Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International license.