Managing the Rubik’s Cube of Assessment: The Action Feedback Protocol

Feedback is only useful if students act on it. That sounds obvious, but many feedback systems are not designed with that goal in mind, they are often designed to justify marks. The Action Feedback Protocol (AFP), introduced in this chapter, is a deliberate attempt to change that. Developed at Heriot-Watt University and now in use across disciplines and campuses worldwide, the AFP works on three levels: it trains students to receive feedback well (“Tune the Ear”), gives markers a simple and consistent structure for writing useful comments (“Simplify the Message”), and prompts students to do something with what they have read (“Encourage Action”). The chapter is written by the team who built the protocol, including a former student who was in one of the first cohorts to use it.

This chapter is for you if you have ever written detailed feedback that students ignored, or struggled to get a marking team to produce consistent comments. The AFP is refreshingly practical. It is not a theory of feedback but a working protocol, and the chapter shows how it has been implemented in a way that you can adapt to your own course.