Published on: 18/11/2025 · Last updated on: 23/11/2025
What is actionable feedback?
In a nutshell, actionable feedback tells students what they did well, what needs improvement, and how to improve. It is feedback that students can act upon in order to improve their work. This is also known as ‘feedforward’.
Why is actionable feedback important?
To support students – Actionable feedback helps students understand expectations and focus their efforts effectively. When feedback emphasises progress and strategies for improvement, it encourages students to view learning as a process. This fosters resilience and a willingness to take on challenges. Actionable feedback also enables students to perceive links across units, thus guarding against siloed thinking.
To respond to student feedback – The National Student Survey (NSS) asks students ‘How often does feedback help you to improve your work?’ Throughout the sector students tend to give lower scores for the assessment and feedback questions than for other areas of the survey. This is something we are keen to turnaround at our university by ensuring our feedback contains all the necessary components to support students’ learning and achievement.
Actionable feedback introduction and examples
Breaking it down
When writing actionable feedback make sure that it’s:
- Specific to the marking criteria and learning outcomes – for example, if you are assessing critical thinking make sure your feedback focuses on this.
- Evidenced – examples are supplied to illustrate the points made about students work. (If there are patterns of errors to highlight for then two or three examples will suffice to demonstrate this.)
- Transferable (it’s clear where the feedback can be applied in the future) – if possible, the next assessment where similar skills or knowledge could be applied is referenced. If this level of detail is not available, then the assessment type should be referred to, e.g. ‘the next time you write a science report, remember to link back to your literature review in your discussion section.’
Once you have drafted your feedback consider whether your feedback is:
- Balanced in terms of strengths and weaknesses identified – Students need to know what they have done well as well as where they need to improve. This will help them know what to continue doing as well as where changes are needed.
- Personalised not personal – Actionable feedback is necessarily personalised as it points up actions for that individual to undertake. However, in phrasing your feedback, make sure the focus remains on the work itself and does not seek to make claims about the student themselves, e.g. ‘this essay needed a stronger argument’, as opposed to ‘you struggle to construct strong arguments’. Where you are providing whole cohort feedback the scope for personalised feedback is less. However, you might be able to add an element of personalisation by coding your feedback, e.g. assigning a letter or number to each paragraph and letting individual students know which part is particularly applicable for them.
For further insights on providing effective feedback, please consult our page Evaluate your Feedback.
Worked examples
The examples below, show how you can add elements to your feedback to improve its actionability:
Example 1
Specific point drawn from the marking criteria
The presentation covered the main theories but did not fully explore how they apply to the chosen case study.
The Specific point is Evidenced
For example, while Social Identity Theory was introduced clearly, its relevance to the group dynamics in the marketing campaign was only briefly mentioned and not fully analysed.
The Specific point is Evidenced and Transferable (it’s clear where the feedback could be applied in future)
In future assignments, consider explicitly linking each theoretical concept to specific elements of your case study to strengthen your analysis.
Example 2
Specific point drawn from the marking criteria
Whilst you include some key literature sources in your report, the scope of the literature you have drawn on could be broader.
The Specific point is Evidenced
For example, you have focused on sources from only one country and nothing later than 2005.
The Specific point is Evidenced and is Transferable (it’s clear where the feedback could be applied in future)
For your next report, also draw on literature from the Global South, and refer to more recent sources.