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Making the Most of Feedback

Whether your teacher has provided you with feedback or you've participated in a long-form critique or a quick peer-feedback session in class, taking the feedback you've received and putting it into action is a skill. Reflections offer an intermediate step to help you process the information you've received so that you can later implement the parts of the feedback you wish to utilise.

External Feedback

Suppose you've participated in a deep discussion with a friend or family member or even with your teacher and classmates. In that case, you'll know it might take a few hours or even days to process the information you've received. This is pretty normal! 

Importantly, in a Visual Arts classroom, you're likely receiving a lot of informal and formal feedback all the time. Here are some ways you might be receiving feedback:

  • Informal conversations with your peers about ideas, techniques, or materials
  • Quick chats with your teacher during class
  • Sticky Note Critiques
  • Resolved Artwork Critiques
  • Informal conversations from school members after a formal or informal exhibition
  • Formal feedback from your teacher when your work is assessed (this might be video, verbal, or written)
 Teacher only box

Students need time to process feedback. If you rush to move on to the next unit or project, it's easy to skip this step, however! Be sure to incorporate time into your class for students to jot down notes after peer feedback or a critique. In addition, make sure you give your students time in class to read your written feedback.

Today's students are sometimes digitally overwhelmed, and many don't check the online platforms where information and feedback are posted. Similarly, hand-written or printed feedback easily gets tossed aside or crumpled at the bottom of a bag. While students will miss a significant opportunity to read your feedback, it's also time-spent on your part. To ensure everyone gets the most of the input shared, schedule time into your lessons to make processing feedback part and parcel of the course.

The pink section below offers one strategy for processing feedback. However, this processing could also occur as a verbal conversation amongst peers or through another method you choose.

Processing Feedback

So...now what? What should you do with all this information?! Here are a few tips to help you wade through the information:

  1. Write down what you remember from verbal conversations.
  2. Read your notes as well as any written feedback you've received.
  3. Before you analyse, you might categorize the feedback into a few sections (use sticky notes, a mindmap or a chart to visualize the categories more quickly). Some categories for this visual arts course could include:
    • Areas to improve: Techniques, materials, compositional design, selection of images, communication of ideas, OR connections between artworks.
    • Areas to celebrate: Techniques, materials, compositional design, selection of images, communication of ideas, OR connections between artworks.
  4. Now it's time to analyse the feedback evidence you've documented and categorised.
 Teacher only box

You can point students to some of the questioning strategies and Question Stems shared in our Self-Reflection page, to help them sift and sort through the feedback they've received in a strategic way.

Analyse Feedback and then Self-Reflect

Before writing or verbalising any reflection, it's essential to look back through your notes and decipher: what's helpful and valuable and ...what's not?

Irrelevant Feedback: If it feels virtually impossible to take on everyone's feedback, that's because it is! Some classmates or school audience members may make uninformed interpretations or assumptions about your work that don't feel relevant. It's okay to let these comments go.

Relevant Feedback: Pay attention to the feedback that furthers your interests, concepts, or skills. For example, if you endeavour to work within a particular genre or style, choose the input that helps you further those goals. Similarly, when you receive critical feedback with suggestions for how to improve your work, pay attention.

Actionable Feedback: It's possible that some of the feedback you've received is very specific to a recent artwork and won't be applicable in the future. Notice which aspects of the feedback you can carry forward into the future.

  • Is there a particular skill you can work on?
  • What new material understandings did others highlight that you hadn't considered before?
  • In deciphering the feedback you've received, did people grasp the concepts you hoped to portray? What can you take away from this for new artworks in the future?
  • What suggestions did you receive for improving your choice of design (composition, form, layout, etc.)?
  • Are there any other discoveries in your work that someone illuminated for you?
  • Did you have an "aha!" moment after reading or hearing someone's comment? What more can you say about this?

Write: After you've sorted through the feedback you've received, carve out 15 minutes to process your thinking in a written reflection. You can combine the feedback you've received to help you answer reflection questions at the end of a project in your sketchbook or Process Portfolio, or you can use this feedback to help you get started on something entirely new.

Further Resources:

Check out these resources for further information on self-reflection and questioning strategies to get the most out of the feedback others have generously given:

Journal Reflections

Teach students the habit of writing reflectively about art. By regularly investigating the meaning of art and related issues they will develop writing skills, critical thinking skills and learn to use...

Self-Reflection

"We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience," John Dewey stated in 1933. The following page includes some dynamic questions and question stems that you might ask yourself...

Question Stems

Asking questions is one of the highest-order thinking skills, demonstrating one's ability to synthesize different concepts. This skill can support the development of critical thinking across all three...

Image Credits:

Self-Portrait (1956) by Vivian Maier. https://www.vivianmaier.com/gallery/self-portraits/#slide-33

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