GIVING EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK

Be positive

Focus on all the aspects of the presentation the student has done well. It is much easier for
people to accept feedback if there is a balance between positive and negative. However,
positive feedback does not mean writing a comment like ‘good work’. Use a framework or
marking sheet (see example below) to help you point out what they did well. For example,
“Your use of eye-contact was effective throughout most of the presentation. You used a wide
range of vocabulary related to the topic.”

Exceeds Strong Needs

developing
requirements performance improvement

Response to task:
 Answers the task      
question

Delivery
 Body language,      
gestures, eye-contact

Communication:
 Pronunciation:
individual sounds
 Connected speech
   
 Pace/hesitation
 Uses a wide range of
linkers appropriate for
speaking

Be concrete

Ensure your feedback is specific and clear, so students know exactly what they need to improve
upon. For example, instead of ‘grammar is weak’ or ‘body language needs work’, say “During
the presentation you didn’t choose the correct tense.” “During the presentation, you looked at
the screen a lot while you were reading.”

Be descriptive instead of evaluative

Tell students why your feedback is important, and why they need to change how they present.
By just raising an issue, the student may not understand why that was a problem, and without
explanation may be unsure as to whether it is positive or negative feedback. For example,
instead of ‘grammar is weak’ or ‘body language needs work’, say “During the presentation you
didn’t vary the time tenses. As a result, I couldn’t tell if you were referring to an opinion, or a
past case study. This was confusing.”

Highlight the costs of the problem behaviour

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Instead of saying what you would have done yourself in that situation, show students why it is
important they improve. Students are more likely to take it on board if they can see how
changing their behaviour could produce a better result. For example, “As a result, the
presentation was less engaging for the audience because you were not having an interaction
with them.”

Feedback is an important part of student learning, and there are many more ways of giving
effective feedback on presentations. Watch out for part 2 of this series, where Gaby will share
more guidance on improving your feedback. In the meantime, read Gaby’s last article on
Paraphrasing with Advanced Learners’ Dictionaries.

SAMPLES OF OUR FEEDBACK ON ORAL PRESENTATIONS AND SYNOPSES

Draft (1 point):
1. You did not give a draft presentation in a tutorial session, although you did send me draft
slides on dd mmm.
2. Your presentation was on the following day.

Slides (7 points):
1. Full bibliographic information should include important data about the publication (i.e. LNCS
XXXX, Title of Publication, year of publication), publisher (i.e. Springer-Verlag), and page
range, in addition to the name of the conference, author and article (which you have
provided).
2. Your slides had no focus you covered the entire article. You should have shown your
critical and appreciative understanding by emphasizing the most important point or points.
3. Your appreciative comment was really a summary or paraphrase of a large segment of
your article: it wasn’t clearly focused on anything that you believe to be of particular interest
to your classmates in COMPSCI 725, and you didn’t give any indication of why you thought
it was particularly interesting.
4. Overall your slideshow showed some understanding of your topic, however I see little
indication of a strong understanding because your appreciative and critical comments did
not give evidence of any in-depth analysis.
5. Your criticism was very similar to the previous presenters criticism (see
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/compsci725s1c/assignments/presentations/xxx.ppt) -- a
similar criticism would be fine if you had developed it in a novel way that showed your own
understanding.
6. I would have been happier with your second criticism if you had phrased it in standard
terminology, for example that of Pfleeger.
7. Overall your slideshow didn't cut below the surface of this article: you didn't develop any of
your comments in any detail.
8. You introduced a change to the authors example on your slide XX, for no apparent reason.
9. You did an excellent job of correcting a mistake made by the author.
10. Your slides do not show a strong understanding of the paper.
11. You misspelled some technical words, possibly causing confusion.
12. Good effort, especially in redrawing the figures for clarity in the slideshow.

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13. The slideshow was generally unsuccessful in carrying the meaning of any important point in
your article, because you omitted the definitions of key concepts.
14. You had too many slides, with insufficient focus on the most important elements. Your oral
presentation was rushed as a result.
15. You spoke at great length on several topics, which were only mentioned by name on your
slide. (Your slides should contain the most important information, so that your audience can
read it, as well as hear it. If a topic is important enough to talk about for a long time, you
should revise your slide to contain more information about it.)
16. Good length & amount of detail.
17. Your slideshow was successful at explaining some difficult and important concepts.
18. Your analysis on slides XX was an excellent linkage to material presented earlier in
Compsci 725.
19. You introduced some excellent diagrams, not present in the original text.
20. Your slides were carefully prepared in general, although some of your points were not
entirely clear or even incorrect. We don't believe you are paraphrasing XX accurately when
you write (on slide X) XXX. What XX actually wrote was YYY.
21. Overall your slides showed an adequate but not complete understanding of your topic.
22. Your slides include several very insightful comments on the principles underlying the attack
by YY, leading me to believe that you have an excellent understanding of this portion of the
paper -- stronger than my own. [However] your slides do not exhibit a strong understanding
of the security implications of this attack.
23. I'm unable to find textual support [in your article] for your assertion (criticism #X) that the
authors have made an incorrect claim to XX. The validity of your criticism #X seems thus
to rest on [your] restatement or interpretation of the authors' claims to generality.
24. Your characterization of XX, on slide X, as being a "XXX" is not accurate.
25. Because you have not made any explicit critical or appreciative comments [in your
slideshow] I will accept your diagrams on slides X and Y as non-explicit criticisms, and give
you partial credit for these.

Timing (2 points):
1. You finished your slideshow in 6 to 10 minutes.
2. You completed in 5 or 6 minutes.

Question (2 points):
1. You posed a stimulating question.
2. Your question was rather open-ended, although it did stimulate discussion.
3. Your prepared question was not thought provoking; instead it could be answered by
pattern-matching on words and phrases in your slideshow.
4. Your question was very difficult: are you able to answer it? (If not, then there’s little
chance that anyone in the audience will be able to do so.)
5. Your question about ethics was rather open-ended and vaguely stated, making no
explicit use of the ethical terminology and frameworks presented earlier this term.
6. Your question doesn't show much understanding of your topic, nor are you using the
standard terminology of a security analyst.
7. Your question stands somewhat in contradiction to your appreciative comment
8. You had not prepared a question in your slideshow.

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Discussion (3 points):
1. Your limited participation in the discussion did not demonstrate much understanding of
the paper.
2. You gave an incorrect answer to my question.
3. Your answer to my question did not show any depth of understanding of material in your
slideshow.
4. You handled the discussion very well, showing excellent understanding of the material
you presented.
5. You defended your critical appreciation ably in the Q&A session.
6. Overall in your discussion you gave me the impression that you were much more
interested in defending your point of view, rather than in encouraging an open discussion
that might reach a better understanding after taking other points of view into full
consideration.
7. Overall you seemed to be struggling to keep up with the discussion; most of your
questioners seemed to know more about your chosen topic than you did.
8. excellent discussion, you (and your audience) raised a number of interesting points. (In
the future you probably should allow your questioners a little more time to complete their
points, before you step in with a response.)
9. You held your own in the discussion, without dominating it. Several interesting points
were made, to which you had appropriate responses.
10. your topic generated a spirited discussion, however we didn't hear you making any
particularly insightful contributions.
11. Unfortunately your good question [for which you received 2/2 marks] did not lead to a
stimulating discussion.
12. The people in the audience who contributed to your discussion showed more
understanding of this paper than you did in your response to their comments.

Oral Presentation Totals (15 points maximum):Assignment 1 (ungraded): Draft Title,

Synopsis, Reference List

Title:

1. This does not match your synopsis.

2. This is a good description of your synopsis.
3. Too wordy.
4. Too vague.
5. This title is somewhat broader than your synopsis, which only promises to examine three of
the many available methods for [accomplishing] XX. Perhaps you should add the qualifier
"Three" to the front of your title.
6. Your title is quite short, so you might add some words to more clearly convey your topic.
Your current synopsis describes a survey paper -- so the word Survey could be added to
your title (unless you refine your topic -- and I strongly recommend you narrow your topic,
see below).
7. Before you finalise your title for submission on your term paper, I strongly encourage you to
ask advice from a native English speaker. Because many people will read your title, it is

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 important that it be as clear as possible -- and thus you should make special effort (well
beyond what you put into the rest of your paper) to detect & correct any grammatical errors.
8. Your title contains two uncommon acronyms, so it will not be helpful to most potential
readers.

Synopsis:
1. You must find a much narrower focus for your paper, otherwise you'll be writing in such
vague generalities that you cannot possibly show your critical and appreciative
understanding of your sources. You should also pick one audience and stick with it: you
won't be able to write a paper that is appropriate for both common people and specialists.
As I mentioned recently in class, I expect your term paper to be written for an audience that
knows stage-3 computer science.
2. This sounds interesting but is far too ambitious. I think you should try to focus your topic,
perhaps by considering only two of your three alternatives, and/or perhaps by focusing on a
very short list of security objectives (perhaps with a single entry), and/or perhaps by
focusing on a very narrow range (perhaps a single one) of applications for [security
technology XX].
3. You should probably focus on either XX or YY, and not try to cover both.
4. I suggest you revise both your title and your synopsis, to focus on the security issues in just
one of the many applications of XX. If you try to cover all issues and all applications, even
briefly, then I doubt you will have much chance to show your critical and appreciative
understanding.
5. I am pleased to see that the three of you have independently submitted your project plans.
However I am not responding to your plan independently of the others, for I don't see any
indication that you have developed independent goals for each of your term projects. I am
happy for you to cooperate closely -- especially on setting up [your experimental framework]
-- but I will insist that each of you develop and pursue your own line of practical work, for
writing up in your term project report
6. Your synopsis does not clearly convey a goal. Vaguely planned experimentation that might
lead to practical experience is not an acceptable goal for a term project.
7. I have learned to distrust any technical argumentation that begins with the phrase It is plain
to see that... or any similar phrase -- generally such argumentation tells me that the writer is
unable (or unwilling) to supply a good reason why anyone should believe the assertion that
follows.
8. I don't know what you mean by the phrase "the reliability of the results received". Please be
careful to distinguish between false positives and false negatives.
9. I strongly suspect you're right to think that there's very little published information on XX,
other than website promos and other unreferred ephemera. I think you'll find at least a few
substantive white-papers, i.e. I found http://www.xxx.pdf by a Google search on XX YY. One
way to handle this shortage of refereed publications on your topic is to treat the ephemera
as "primary sources" in much the same way as a historian might treat personal letters,
diaries etc. Such sources are authoritative on some topics, i.e. documenting the author's
point of view at a particular point in time. If you pursue this line of enquiry, don't try to verify
any of the claimed properties of the XXs on offer; but instead you can analyze the product
literature for its claims -- what are the primary selling points of the current batch of XXs?

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 How are these points described, i.e. do the authors invent their own terminology or do they
adopt someone else's terminology?
10. Your synopsis does not clearly define a topic. Are you proposing to take a critical and
appreciative look at the proposal by XX, with particular reference to earlier proposals by YY
and others?
11. All of your references are at least 4 years old. I suggest you do a "forward literature search"
(ask a librarian for assistance on this, or use Cite seer to discover more recent publications
that reference either the XX paper or one of YY’s attack papers. I think you'll find that ZZ is a
very large and well-researched area. So an appropriate challenge for you to meet in your
term paper is to define a small piece of this area, where you'll have a chance of developing
your own critical and appreciative understanding.
12. You have proposed to write a survey paper of the sort that would be appropriate only if you
can't find any previously-published survey paper on XX. If you can find a survey paper, then
I'd expect you to work within the structure (i.e. taxonomy, terminology, methodology) set up
by the previous writer(s) of survey papers -- you could add new items to their taxonomy (if it
omits some promising techniques in XX), you could critically & appreciatively examine the
methodology (or methodologies) used in previous surveys to compare/contrast different
approaches to XX, etc. If you can't find a survey paper, then you have a more open field --
your goal, in writing the paper, is to develop a consistent terminology and perhaps a
reasonable taxonomy for classifying some of the existing methods. I don't think it's realistic
to expect a term paper to be an exhaustive survey of any field. You'll be much better off
reading (and writing on) a few papers carefully, rather than spending a lot of time trying to
discover and report on all XX systems.
13. You have found six very solid sources, congratulations! However -- the concept of XX is
quite subtle, and has many applications in software security, so I strongly recommend that
you focus your research on one way in which XX can be applied to achieve a specific
security goal. Otherwise I think you will almost certainly write an incoherent paper that will
not show much critical or appreciative understanding of the many topics you might try to
cover.
14. Your synopsis gives me no indication of what you're expecting to do with the information in
XXl's article, other than that you might be intending to paraphrase it. This would not be
acceptable: I expect all COMPSCI 725 students to write a term paper showing critical and
appreciative understanding of at least three articles.
15. In any technical paper you should treat your subject fairly -- you must disclose all relevant
data, especially if this data would tend to weaken your argument.

Reference List:
1. No matter what you choose as a specific focus for your paper, I will expect you to draw on
your knowledge of (and make relevant references to) article XX [on the required reading list
of COMPSCI 725].
2. When you read your articles, you should note the page range and include this information in
your bibliography.
3. Congratulations on your literature review, you have made an excellent start on your term
paper. I think once you focus your topic, you will quickly develop a point of view that allows
you to write a coherent term paper that draws on the sources you list.

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4. Your reference list is rather short for such a broad topic. I think you should search the
literature again after you focus on a more specific topic. However: the references you have
found seem to be substantial and authoritative -- although I haven't read any of them except
the first!
5. You have supplied far too little bibliographic detail. Any article posted to CNet news.com
would not be an appropriate primary reference for a term paper (i.e. do not use it as one of
the three required sources on which you will make critical and appreciative comment).
However it is a reputable news bureau so it could well be appropriate for you to cite one or
more news articles to support a factual assertion (i.e. about current-year sales of [some
product], or about [someones] testimony before the US Congress).
6. The phrase fair use has only a vague moral/ethical meaning in jurisdictions (such as NZ)
where it doesn't have a legal meaning. If you want to use this phrase in your term paper or
project report, you must be careful to define what you mean by it!
7. Your references are somewhat carelessly constructed (with typos, inappropriate
abbreviations etc) and they lack some important bibliographic information, i.e. date of
publication.
8. I suspect you have access to a draft version of an article which you obtained somehow from
XX or one of the other authors. This would be fine as a primary source for your COMPSCI
725 term paper, as XX (http://www.YY.edu.ZZ/~XX) is a respected academic researcher
and this work seems (from its title) to be quite interesting and relevant to COMPSCI 725.
However if you use any such non-archival source, you *must* cite it very carefully, to reveal
its exact provenance to any reader who might want to refer to your actual source.
9. After reading your synopsis I don't see any reason why the XX paper on YY should appear
in your reference list.
10. You have done an excellent job of tracking down, and citing, what (to my untutored eye
appear very likely to be) very appropriate references in your topic area. Congratulations.
11. Authors' institutional affiliations are not relevant to a citation, unless the cited material is an
unpublished document which you obtained directly from the author -- and if you cite such
unpublished documents you must give full information on its provenance (including the date
you received it and how you received it).
12. I don't think you should start work on this term paper by reading books. Instead I
recommend you search for, and read, technical articles that will help you build on what you
have learned in some previous computer science coursework.
13. The trouble with using books as sources for a COMPSCI 725 paper is that a good book
contains far too much information for anyone to read from cover-to-cover in the time
available, if you are thinking carefully enough about what you are reading that you'll be able
to show your critical and appreciative understanding in your term paper. So I strongly
suggest you pick a topic that is quite narrow, so that only a chapter of each book is directly
relevant to your topic. Then you can have a chance of reading this chapter carefully enough
to develop a strong understanding of how it relates to other authors' treatments of your
chosen topic.
14. Your references [1] and [2] will, I think, have very similar information. You should look for a
third reference, ideally one that clearly describes an XX implementation that is focused on a
specific application (perhaps YY) with specific security goals. You'll also need an
authoritative reference that will support whatever definition you choose, in your term paper,
for the phrase "XX". You'll have to define this term very briefly in your abstract, and more

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 carefully in your introduction.(One way of determining authority is by looking at the reference
list of the article in question -- if it refers [appropriately] to other authoritative sources, then
you should gain confidence in its authority.)
15. I expect COMPSCI 725 students to provide a reference list that provides complete and
accurate bibliographic information in a consistent style.
16. Your style is somewhat inconsistent in its ordering of information (especially about page
numbers), and you have suppressed important information.
17. It is generally considered inappropriate style to abbreviate titles of articles in a reference list.
18. You are proposing to write on a topic that has already attracted a lot of attention.
19. Much of what is written is polemic in nature, rather than academic; I'm pleased to see that
you have picked academic sources.

Giving Constructive Feedback on Presentations

1. Positive phrasing – provide a positive framework for the message

 Explicitly identify and positively reinforce what was done well
 Constructive feedback is based on a foundation of trust between sender and receiver.
 Examine your own motives: be sure your intention is to be helpful, not to show how
perceptive and superior you are; be on the other personʹs side.
2. Concreteness – ground feedback in specific, observable behavior
 Constructive feedback should be specific and clear, not general or vague.
 Prioritize your feedback – focus on the most important areas you have observed
 Be descriptive rather than evaluative. Describe your partner’s actions in the classroom
and
 the results you observed; do not judge. “You worked through the example problem very
quickly, and many students seemed confused.” is an observation; “You did a bad job
with the example problem” is vague and judgmental.
3. Action‐orientation – give a specific plan of action to follow
 Don’t explain what you would have done in a similar situation; frame your feedback in
terms of your partner’s teaching. I would have done X… Better: “Perhaps next time you
could try using quick group activities to check comprehension.”
 Highlight costs of behavior to the other. If you can, help the other person see how the
behavior in question affects the classroom and the benefits of addressing this. For
example“ Quick group activities might allow some students to either work through the
problem themselves, or at least help them articulate where they are getting stuck; this
may make your job much easier…”
4. Focus – provide feedback on behavior that the individual can change
 Offer feedback in a spirit of tentativeness. Offer it as a personal perception, not as “the
truth.”
 Focus your comments on your colleagueʹs behavior rather than on her/his personality –
for example, instead of saying, “Youʹre unfocused”, say, “You presented a class outline,
but you didnʹt stick to it and I found it difficult to know where you were up to”.
 Check the feedback with your partner to determine whether it seems valid. Ask your
partner to rephrase and restate the feedback to see whether it matches what you
intended. When Receiving Constructive Feedback
 Begin the feedback session with your own reflections. When reflecting, you might be
8 | GIVING EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK
 tempted to focus on what you feel went badly, but also try to identify a couple of things
with which you were pleased.
 Discuss the feedback you get. You can ask things like “You said I lost them. Where
exactly did I lose them? How could you tell Iʹd lost them? Why do you think it might have
happened? How might I prevent this?”

Constructive Feedback: Examples

1. The time and energy you devoted to the preparation of the class discussion questions is
clearly well‐received by the students; they do the work and are clearly interested in the
subject. This is a definite plus. However, you might find that many of the detailed, fact‐
based questions that you asked in class might given to the students ahead of time to allow
them to prepare for a deeper discussion in class.
2. The case study discussion seemed to be very productive and most of the students
participated with meaningful comments and good answers to your questions. Unfortunately,
there didn’t seem to be enough time for closure, and I sensed that the students needed to
have some resolution of at least the major issues in the case, especially since their mid‐term
is coming up soon. Since you are trying to keep to your schedule, it is probably impractical
to resume the discussion in the next class, but one solution might be to prepare a handout
to tie up some of the loose ends that you can give to the students next time.
3. Your opening points of the lecture were very interesting and I could see how they were
related to the day’s topic, but during the lecture the students seemed a bit confused about
the connections. Perhaps you could write these points on the board or prepare them ahead
of time on an overhead transparency so you could refer to them again during the remainder
of the lecture.

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