Technology as Feedback Source

The strategy, as published

Exactly as it appears on the card

Part of Source & Direction in 03 Feedback, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.

Why you might use it

The problem it may help with

Not every kind of feedback needs you. Automated tools can check factual accuracy and procedural correctness faster than any teacher; what they cannot do is respond to voice, argument or creativity. The card's advice is a division of labour: match the feedback source to what is being assessed.

Done well, this buys back the scarcest resource in the system, teacher attention, and spends it where automation cannot go.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

In a languages classroom, the approved practice tool handles vocabulary and conjugation accuracy, correcting as pupils go. The teacher's written feedback on the same unit leaves those layers alone and addresses how convincingly the pupil's letter argues its case.

Try it

A way to begin

List what you marked in your last set, then sort it: accuracy and correctness on one side, voice, argument and quality of thinking on the other. Ask what on the first list a tool in your setting could carry.

What to notice

Reading what happens

• Whether your own comments become fewer and more substantial once accuracy checking moves elsewhere.
• Whether pupils act on automated corrections or click past them. A tick accepted without a redo has fed nothing back.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

• The strand's warning applies with full force here: automated feedback that gives a score, a tick or a badge and stops there is information, not feedback. The tool supplies the correction; you still supply the time and the expectation that pupils use it.

Related strategies

Where this connects

• ⏰ Immediate for Simple Tasks For simple or procedural tasks, correct errors immediately. Shute found quick feedback prevents mistakes from embedding. Do not wait until next lesson to fix what can be fixed now. 03 Feedback · Timing & Frequency
• ✅ Provide Instant Feedback Metcalfe shows instant feedback is essential for confident errors. For general retrieval, allow a processing gap before revealing answers. Speed matters most when confidence is highest. 01 Retrieval Practice · Metacognition & Calibration
• 🔍 Feedback Is Not Marking If a student never reads or acts on your comments, you have marked but not given feedback. Before returning work, plan how students will engage with it. No engagement, no feedback. 03 Feedback · What Feedback Is
• 📋 Whole Class Feedback Read the set and identify patterns: common strengths, recurring errors, one priority next step. Teach to the gap, not to each paper. Sustainable for teachers; precise for students. 03 Feedback · Source & Direction

Technology second

Where technology fits

The card's own framing is the safeguard. Use the approved adaptive or AI-assisted tool in your setting for what it is designed to assess, factual accuracy and procedural correctness, and reserve yourself for the rest; judgements about argument, voice and creativity stay with you. The question to keep asking is not whether the tool's feedback is fast, which it will be, but whether pupils do anything with it. Speed only counts when it leads to a correction, a retry or a redraft.

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Shute's review supports quick, automated correction for procedural work, while Black and Wiliam's account of formative practice describes what no tool replaces: the professional judgement about where the learning goes next. The card’s attribution stands as published: Shute; Black & Wiliam.

The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Feedback.