Four-stage feedback model (slightly reworked)

FOUR STAGE FEEDBACK MODEL

The following four stage feedback model can help any manager/professor/mentor better  serve project participants/students/protégés.
The model consists of four parts:
1. guidance, 2. formative feed-forward, 3. formative feedback, and 4. summative feedback.

The following diagram details the approach suggested by the model:
Diagram 1. Four Stage Faculty-Student Feedback Model

© Alon Rozen 2011

1. Initial guidance/instruction: Initial guidance should let project participants understand what is expected of them and, if needed, give them instruction in the skills needed to carry out the project.

2. Formative feedforward lets participants know if they are on the right track and quickly enables them to correct their course of action if they are off track. This stage ensures that the skills required to carry out the project are indeed mastered and, if not, a secondary instruction phase can be initiated.

3. Formative feedback occurs slightly before or after the project's midway point to give participants feedback on their progress to date and to validate that their project is meeting expectations.  This feedback allows participants to proceed with confidence, in the best case scenario, and to make necessary adjustments, in all other scenarios.

4. Summative feedback gives participants overall feedback after the end of the project to help participants know how they did, where they performed well or less well, and where additional work and/or adjustments are needed for future projects.

Project Feedback Structure

As I was thinking about how best to give feedback for projects I started reading about the subject a bit and, long story short, I developed my own structure that I attempted to model which includes:

1. Guidance
2. Formative feed-forward
3. Formative feedback
4. Summative feedback

The following schema details this idea a bit more:

In terms of initial guidance/instruction, feedback should be of a nature to let project participants understand what is expected of them and, if needed, give them instruction in the skills needed to carry out the project.

The formative feedforward, is feedback that lets participants know if they are on the right track and quickly corrects course if they are off track. This also includes ensuring that the skills necessary to carry out the project are indeed mastered and, if not, a secondary instruction phase can be initiated.

The formative feedback, usually around or slightly after the project's midway point is to give participants feedback on how they are doing, to review that which was done and to validate that their production is up to the expected standard. This allows participants to proceed with confidence, in the best case scenario, and to make necessary adjustments, in all other scenarios.

Finally, summative feedback is overall feedback after the end of the project to help participants how they did, where they shined and where additional work is needed for "next time".

This framework appears to have applications in business and in the classroom - and I intend to use it in both settings to see if it needs additional tweaking.

If you have any comments or suggestions let me know.