The Loop Is the Course

I once ran a course where the feedback was genuinely good and arrived genuinely too late — thoughtful comments a learner received after the unit had closed, when nothing they did next could be shaped by them. The comments were true, well written, and useless.

Timing beats eloquence. A rough note that arrives while the learner can still act on it does more than a polished paragraph that arrives when they cannot. The loop — attempt, feedback, revision — is not a feature bolted onto the course. In a real sense it is the course.

Design the loop, not the comment

Feedback fails when we treat it as something the marker improvises at the end rather than something the design builds in from the start. Boud and Molloy make the case plainly: feedback is a loop to be designed, not an episode to be delivered, and it only works if the learner has a later chance to use it (Boud & Molloy, 2013). Hattie and Timperley add the questions any loop must answer — where am I going, how am I going, where to next (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).

Feedback that arrives too late is decoration. Design the loop, not the comment.

Feedback as a designed object

The fix that worked for me was to stop asking markers to improvise. I built the feedback into a form they filled against visible criteria — a designed object, not a blank box — so it arrived faster, landed more consistently, and pointed at process rather than personality. That matters most for the learner who works alone, with no colleague to glance over their shoulder; the design has to be the mirror no one else provides.

Why AI raises the stakes

AI can generate feedback instantly, which is a real gift and a real trap. Fast, formative, revisable feedback on a draft is exactly the loop we want. Feedback that quietly writes the revision for the learner closes the loop by removing the learner from it. Design decides which one you get.

The move

Find one point in a course where feedback arrives too late to use, and move it earlier, with a built-in chance to revise. One well-placed loop teaches more than three tidy summaries.