Feedback That Matters: Using Feedback Loops to Enhance Teaching and Learning

Introduction

Successful learning is a collaborative process that requires both instructors and students to engage in knowledge creation (Fraile, Gil-Izquierdo, and Medina-Moral 2023; Khuder, 2025; Shinde et al., 2025). Despite this shared responsibility, feedback on coursework is often one-sided, privileging the instructor as the sole arbiter of student achievement. This method creates an inequitable power dynamic, positioning learners as passive recipients of knowledge (Jeffrey and Halcomb-Smith, 2020; Khuder, 2025). Instead of viewing feedback as unilateral, instructors might reimagine it as a type of dialogue (Williams, 2024). This more democratic approach to learning incorporates opportunities for structured, mutual feedback, providing instructors with timely insights into their teaching techniques and students with the guidance they need to meet learning objectives.

This synergistic exchange might best be conceptualized as a feedback loop. In the context of teaching and learning, a feedback loop is an iterative process that connects real-time learning with formative and summative assessment as well as future learning (Askew and Lodge, 2000; Willis, 2014). It creates a more active and transparent learning environment by promoting mutual accountability between instructors and students (Myers, 2024). The purpose of this article is to provide practical strategies for leveraging feedback loops for continuous course improvement.

Why Feedback Loops Matter: The Role of Formative and Summative Assessment

Feedback loops help instructors transform assessment into an ongoing conversation with students, a process that requires instructors to rethink the relationship between formative and summative assessment.

Historically, instructors have relied on summative assessments, such as tests, quizzes, final exams, and term papers, to evaluate learning and communicate progress to learners. While this form of assessment offers an overall appraisal of student performance after a specific period, it fails to identify key knowledge gaps or to provide meaningful learning interventions (Foster, 2024; Myers, 2024).

These limitations underscore the importance of formative assessments, which provide students with constructive feedback on their progress toward meeting specific learning goals and objectives. Formative assessments are usually not graded for accuracy and are sometimes viewed as practice opportunities for students to perform well on summative assessments. Further, instructors may use them to collect feedback on student progress and adjust their teaching methods accordingly (Myers, 2024). Multiple studies suggest that consistent formative assessment opportunities support increased levels of motivation, engagement, self-regulation, and academic success (Mertens et al., 2022; Parmigiani, 2024; Ramasay, 2021; Trujillo et al., 2025). Despite these considerable benefits, incorporating formative assessment into feedback loops is challenging.

Successful feedback loops require time, commitment, and dedication from instructors and students. Formative and summative assessments must be intentionally aligned to accurately measure student learning, which requires careful planning by instructors. Providing and/or reviewing student feedback is labor intensive, and students aren’t always willing or able to apply the feedback they receive (Myers, 2024). While these challenges necessitate thoughtful solutions, they aren’t impossible to overcome. Although both parties may feel overwhelmed by such demands, instructors and students can work together to create a rewarding learning experience that is worth the effort it requires. The instructional techniques below provide an approachable way to streamline the creation of feedback loops so that they are meaningful for all stakeholders

Student Quality Circles: A Collaborative Model for Student Feedback

Originating in the industry sector, quality circles are small, participatory groups of employees who do the same (or similar) job(s). They meet voluntarily to identify work-related problems, discuss solutions, and share their concerns with management. In an educational setting, a quality circle is a small number of students who get together on a regular basis to discuss course concerns and present constructive feedback to their instructor. Quality circles promote inclusion, collaboration, and creative problem solving to prepare learners for summative assessments. They work particularly well in large undergraduate courses where engagement can be a challenge (Schmidt et al., 2005).

While quality circles provide opportunities for students to co-create their learning environment, they also present considerable challenges in terms of the following:

• Recruitment

  • It’s imperative for a diverse group of students with a wide range of opinions and experiences to participate in the quality circle. Instructors may choose to offer a small amount of extra credit to incentivize participation.

• Time Constraints

  • For quality circles to be effective, meetings among students and with their instructor must be regular and structured. Ideally, meetings take place biweekly or monthly, which requires a considerable time commitment from all members of the quality circle. Flexible participation options may be one way to mitigate this issue.

• Meeting Expectations

  • Disagreements may arise during meetings. An etiquette plan should be in place to establish psychological safety, confidentially, and conflict resolution.

These challenges highlight the intentional planning, open-ended communication, and clear expectations successful quality circles require. Instructors must weigh the pros and cons of this method to decide if implementing it seems feasible.

Mid-Semester Check-Ins: A Practical, Scalable Feedback Tool

Mid-semester is a critical point in the semester where students can recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and instructors still have time to adjust their pedagogical practices (Edwards, n.d.). Mid-semester check-ins are an informal type of formative assessment that provides students the opportunity to reflect on their progress and teachers with insight they can use to better align formative and summative assessments. Mid-semester check-ins may take the following forms:

• Anonymous Surveys
• In-class or virtual discussion prompts
• Short reflection prompts posted in the course LMS
• “Temperature Check” polls using interactive software, such as Mentimeter or Poll Everywhere

The University of Colorado Denver School of Education & Human Development recommends adapting a version of the questions below to elicit useful feedback from students:

• What are the most helpful and least helpful aspect of this course so far?
• What has your experience in this class been like?
• Which topic or concept that we’ve covered so far has been the most difficult for you? Why?
• How would you describe the progress you’re making in this class?
• How might I better support your learning in this course?
• If you could change one thing about this class, what would it be?

Although time consuming, to make the most of the collected data, instructors might look to see if any patterns emerge in the feedback and consider how to implement the suggested changes. They can close the loop by discussing the feasibility of the received feedback with students and explain how to leverage any changes made for success on future summative assessments.

Simplified Approaches to Creating Feedback Loops

For instructors with smaller courses or less time to devote to creating feedback loops, the K. Patricia Cross Academy teaching techniques listed below are a good starting point. They can be piloted in a single module or unit and can be easily adapted for learning in a face-to-face setting or virtual environment.

3-2-1

In the 3-2-1 technique, students write about 3 things they learned in the lecture, 2 things they found particularly interesting from the lecture, and 1 question they still have about the lecture content. This bidirectional feedback loop allows students to take time for reflection, while giving instructors insight into students’ understanding of course content.

Quick Write

• The Quick Write is a learning assessment technique where learners respond to an open-ended prompt. Quick Writes may be used to identify patterns across responses. By explaining the way insights gained from this exercise are being used to adjust teaching practices, instructors can complete this reciprocal feedback loop and build trust with students.

Lecture Wrapper

• A Lecture Wrapper is a tool for teaching students self-monitoring behavior as they identify key points from a lecture and then compare their points to the instructor’s list of points. A self-correcting feedback loop is created because the activity helps students pinpoint gaps in their understanding while allowing instructors a means of identifying which concepts they communicated clearly and which may need additional clarification.

Conclusion

Using feedback loops to optimize classroom instruction is an ongoing process that fundamentally reframes the relationship between instructors and students (Foster, 2024).

They allow students to raise issues they may have while providing instructors the opportunity to respond to their specific concerns, creating a more participatory learning environment. However, as Li et al. (2020) note, instructors should be careful to explain how students should revise and improve their work, as the quality of the instructor’s response is an essential component of effective formative feedback that leads to success on summative assessments. This dynamic process sharpens an instructor’s responsiveness and enhances students’ ability to engage with course content, ultimately transforming the classroom into a site of shared knowledge construction.