CTL Blog

Guiding Your Students Toward Meaningful Peer Feedback

September 11, 2025 | 4 Minute Read

This guest post is by Emily Haagenson, Instructional Designer at the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Peer feedback can be an excellent teaching technique.

When done well, it is an excellent way to:

  • Engage your students and cultivate a sense of belonging in your course
  • Maximize and spread your learners’ wealth of knowledge and experience
  • Lessen the feedback burden on the teaching team
  • Solidify course concepts through learner retrieval, review, and discussion

HOWEVER, we need to be sure that we are doing peer feedback well, and this means providing our learners with guidance to make it a successful experience for everyone. Below are some optional instructions to provide students as you ask them to give one another feedback.

You are welcome to use or adapt this guidance in your course. Here are the important take-aways from this example:

  • Emphasis on value and purpose of the peer feedback
  • Guidance around the types of feedback you want them to provide (consider providing more specific examples, prompts, or sentence stems)
  • Encouragement of specific and focused feedback (move students away from vague “Good job!” feedback that isn’t helpful)
  • Attention to intention and tone

Example Guidance to Share with Your Students

Giving peer feedback is not about giving your classmates a high-five for a job well done (though you can include that). You and your peers in this course bring a wealth of knowledge and experience that you can lend to one another to enrich this learning community. This assignment is an opportunity to grow.

Here are some perspectives on feedback that may be helpful to consider as you engage with your classmates.

Types of Feedback

  • Corrective feedback is specific to how well the learner’s work aligns with the learning objectives of the assignment or activity. This feedback highlights areas where the learner has met the prescribed goals and expectations and identifies areas for improvement.
  • Epistemic feedback prompts learners to think more deeply about their work by asking for further clarification and challenging learners to dive deeper into particular ideas.
  • Suggestive feedback gives learners specific advice on how to improve or expand on their work.

The combination of epistemic and suggestive feedback prompts individuals to provide further clarification, while also offering specific suggestions. This can be a helpful combination because it asks learners to “say more” and shows them how to do so (Columbia, n.d.).

Tips for Giving Effective Feedback

  • Specificity: Be as specific as possible. Take the time to provide your peers with information on what exactly they did well or what they can do to improve.
  • Focus: Address your peer’s advancement toward the specific goal or milestone outlined in the assignment.
  • Intention: By fully explaining the purpose of your feedback, you can help ensure that your peer understands how the feedback is meant to help them.
  • Tone: Feedback can only be productive if it is well-received; prioritize being “candid, empathetic, supportive, encouraging, constructive, and respectful” (Fore). That being said, providing critical feedback is difficult, remember:
    • Be genuine. People know when you are using “canned” or meaningless comments.
    • Be positive too – purely critical feedback is difficult to digest.
    • Encourage peers to use their strengths to address their weaknesses (Brown, 2015).
    • Critique the work, not the person (Fore, n.d.).

Feedback Checklist

  • I provided Corrective Feedback: Clarify whether work aligns with assignment expectations.
  • I provided Suggestive Feedback: Provide advice on how to improve or expand ideas.
  • I provided Epistemic Feedback: Prompt greater depth by presenting challenging questions.
  • My feedback was specific and actionable.
  • The purpose of my feedback is clear and helps the learner focus on their progress.
  • My tone is supportive.
  • I genuinely mentioned something (specific) that is positive or well-done.

Sources


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