What is it?

It is common practice for lecturers to give general feedback to students following an assignment. In this feedback session, the lecturer often focuses on recurring issues and common mistakes found in the assignments. Some lecturers may choose to just give a mark to the individual work and give more substantial feedback to the whole class in a general feedback session. This tends to happen with large cohorts of students. Other lecturers give general feedback to the class as well as individual feedback as it gives them an opportunity to highlight what to avoid and what to aim for in future work while drawing on examples from past or upcoming assessments.

How can students make the most of it?

General feedback sessions are useful to all students but particularly for students who only got a mark as it is their chance to receive feedback on their work too. The general character of the feedback received in class does not mean that it will be any less useful than individual feedback as it gives students an opportunity to hear about issues to avoid as well as good examples they may not have been aware of otherwise.