I’ll be honest to say it will take some accustoming to give and receive feedback. Emotions play a huge part in reactions to feedback and we are on a journey now on how to understand and use feedback constructively.  A few weeks ago the whole year were instructed to engage with three peer’s eportfolio’s and I feel this task has highlighted the fact that I commented on two blogs, only one time…. Naughty me!

The feedback I received was mostly positive and framed in a way that didn’t make me feel uncomfortable.  Previously, upon receiving feedback that has firstly been construed negatively had an adverse effect on my confidence and willingness to share future blogs. Confidence is something that can take a long time to build and can be shattered in second and with a few short sentences.  Learning how to frame feedback positively will help immensely deter any conflict in the future with colleagues.  You could list ten positive points about a persons writing but if there is one critique then that can outweigh the positives. To combat this, Nicki mentioned framing feedback in a positive way such as “have you thought about trying this” instead of something like “I didn’t like that”.

The process of giving peer feedback is a daunting.  You might have a thick skin but that doesn’t mean to say the person on the receiving end does.  I found that considering criticising someone’s work before I’ve read it is difficult.  The success criteria of this task was to make suggestions however if you feel the person has met all the criteria do you then pick at their punctuation or grammar?

Certainly from this exercise and in the past I have come to realise the importance of taking time and reading over feedback a few times, as tone is impossible to interpret over text.  In a professional environment, most, if not all feedback will be constructive so I need to learn first time to take my feedback positively to improve my practice.