Getting Feedback On Your Work
Feedback is appropriate at any point in your project. Whether you’re tossing around vague ideas, comparing methodologies, or sharing findings The section of a research article where researchers share the results from the research. This section takes the results and directly connects them to the research questions or hypotheses posed at the start of the article. Also can be called “Findings.” , input from those both close to your topic and tangential to your topic can shape the direction that you take. In fact, if you’re having trouble keeping your project on track, feedback from other researchers may provide the ideas you need to keep going! Those close to your topic can often pose questions to help you refine your ideas. Those more tangential to your subject can sometimes ask questions far outside your thinking, making connections or spurring thoughts that may not have occurred otherwise.
Who can give feedback:
- Local colleagues part of your department, library, campus
- Mentors
- Peers in your area of expertise
- Partners and friends
- Conference presentation or poster attendees
- Editors
- Peer reviewers
When might feedback be especially helpful? This depends mostly on you as a researcher. Some researchers want feedback on areas they perceive as weaknesses to gain another perspective, while some just want a review and proofreading of a final draft. There is no set rule for when you should get feedback (or even if you should get feedback!), but here are some ways feedback at specific times might be beneficial.
During the exploration stage: Feedback during this stage can help you figure out how your area of interest has been approached in the past and may connect you with scholars and literature you weren’t previously aware of.
When figuring out your methodology The theoretical framework that informs how a researcher approaches their work and what methods are used to collect data.: Feedback during this stage can help broaden your understanding of other methodologies that may be appropriate for the research question you want to ask or the population you want to study. A survey may be relatively easy to administer, but richer data can probably be obtained using another method, such as phenomenology or critical incident technique. Talking to others can be the easiest way to learn about new methodologies and determine if they’re a good fit. (Note: Surveys have their place, so if that’s the best fit for your project, go for it! But also, don’t be afraid to try something else.)
When working on your data analysis: What analysis should you do beyond frequencies? How can you generate robust codes that really help you understand your data? Brainstorming with others can help raise awareness of the possibilities.
Any time you get stuck: Seriously, at any point in your project. Even a suggestion from someone completely outside of the profession can be all it takes to spark an idea, alternative approach, or connection that just wasn’t obvious before.
After you have a rough draft of your findings: A local conference or a presentation to other staff in your library can be a great way to test-drive your findings. Do your findings “make sense” to others who have not been part of your project all along? What questions do they ask? What else do they want to know? This kind of feedback can 1) take you back to your data to examine it from a new perspective; 2) give you ideas for adapting your data to a specific publication venue; and 3) generate ideas for your next project, which might build on this first one.
After you have a rough draft of your proposal or paper: Feedback on writing is almost always useful, and a second (or third!) set of eyes on your final product can help raise questions that should be addressed before submission. If your friendly readers have questions, chances are your peer reviewers will have similar questions. Feedback before submission can help speed up the peer review process and reduce the amount of revision you need to do before your work is accepted for publication.
If you already took Course 1, Lesson 3 on Meeting Your Research Goals by Prioritizing Reflection & Community, take another look at the research ecosystem you created. If you haven’t taken that lesson yet, open the 1.3.3: Research Support Ecosystem worksheet in your LPOL Workbook and fill it out.Identify some members of your support network who may be particularly helpful in providing feedback at points in your project where you feel it may be beneficial.
Now revisit your project timeline and add in some “cushion” — extra time at the points in your project where you anticipate you’ll want to get feedback.You might not need it, but it may also encourage you to make adjustments earlier in your timeline to ensure you can meet your deadlines.
How to ask for feedback
- Be direct. Introduce yourself and your project. This is where you’ll use your elevator speech for your project. If you don’t have one, now is a great time to develop one!
- Clearly state what you would like feedback on. Are you just trying to reword a title? Are you unsure of your choice of methodology?
- Explain what you have already tried, with examples if possible. What titles have you already come up with that just don’t feel right? What methodologies have you considered and why? This is your project, so the goal of requesting feedback isn’t to have someone else do the work for you but to provide constructive critique of what you have already done.
- Recognize that the person may not have time to help and respect their boundaries.
Developing relationships
Some projects and researchers benefit from long-term partnerships. These partnerships could include accountability partners, research mentors available through an association, or what is described in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning literature as a “critical friend” (Costa and Kallick 1993). The overall goal of these relationships is to have someone thoroughly and holistically understand the project, understand its value, and help you better understand your own work by asking questions, critiquing the work, and helping you see the project from a new perspective.
For these partnerships to work, there must be trust between the researcher and the individual providing feedback, and it can be helpful to outline shared expectations, including frequency of feedback, format of feedback, and goals of the researcher.
How to use feedback
The goal of any type of feedback is to get you as a researcher thinking about your project in new ways. Feedback can alert you to errors in your understanding or in your data analysis, which should be fixed before sharing the research in a public venue, but it can also just provide input on writing style and phrasing that can help your writing be accessible to a wider audience. Sometimes feedback can completely change how you approach your work, shaping it into something you may never have arrived at on your own.
How to reject feedback
Sometimes, however, feedback is off base for one reason or another. The person providing feedback may have misunderstood something basic about the project, or they may have a vision for this work that is different from yours. You don’t have to accept all feedback that you receive, and this is a skill that you’ll strengthen as you continue to research and build your confidence in this area. Trust yourself, trust your ideas, and be open to the feedback you receive. But in the end, you are responsible for what is published or presented, and you must remain true to your ideas. If you choose not to incorporate certain feedback, remember to thank the person for their time, and be prepared to explain why you don’t think the feedback is a good fit for your project.
Topic 2 References
Bastone, Zoe, “I Can Do This! Doing Research as a Non-tenure-track librarian. A Librarian Parlor Series, Part II,” The Librarian Parlor. September 2019. https://libparlor.com/2019/09/10/i-can-do-this-doing-research-as-a-non-tenure-track-librarian-a-librarian-parlor-series-part-ii/
Costa, Arthur L. and Bena Kallick. “Through the Lens of a Critical Friend.” ASCD 51, no. 2 (1993). https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/through-the-lens-of-acritical-friend?limit=all
Getting Feedback On Your Work
Feedback is appropriate at any point in your project. Whether you’re tossing around vague ideas, comparing methodologies, or sharing findingsResults The section of a research article where researchers share the results from the research. This section takes the results and directly connects them to the research questions or hypotheses posed at the start of the article. Also can be called “Findings.” , input from those both close to your topic and tangential to your topic can shape the direction that you take. In fact, if you’re having trouble keeping your project on track, feedback from other researchers may provide the ideas you need to keep going! Those close to your topic can often pose questions to help you refine your ideas. Those more tangential to your subject can sometimes ask questions far outside your thinking, making connections or spurring thoughts that may not have occurred otherwise.
Who can give feedback:
When might feedback be especially helpful? This depends mostly on you as a researcher. Some researchers want feedback on areas they perceive as weaknesses to gain another perspective, while some just want a review and proofreading of a final draft. There is no set rule for when you should get feedback (or even if you should get feedback!), but here are some ways feedback at specific times might be beneficial.
During the exploration stage: Feedback during this stage can help you figure out how your area of interest has been approached in the past and may connect you with scholars and literature you weren’t previously aware of.
When figuring out your methodologyMethodology The theoretical framework that informs how a researcher approaches their work and what methods are used to collect data.: Feedback during this stage can help broaden your understanding of other methodologies that may be appropriate for the research question you want to ask or the population you want to study. A survey may be relatively easy to administer, but richer data can probably be obtained using another method, such as phenomenology or critical incident technique. Talking to others can be the easiest way to learn about new methodologies and determine if they’re a good fit. (Note: Surveys have their place, so if that’s the best fit for your project, go for it! But also, don’t be afraid to try something else.)
When working on your data analysis: What analysis should you do beyond frequencies? How can you generate robust codes that really help you understand your data? Brainstorming with others can help raise awareness of the possibilities.
Any time you get stuck: Seriously, at any point in your project. Even a suggestion from someone completely outside of the profession can be all it takes to spark an idea, alternative approach, or connection that just wasn’t obvious before.
After you have a rough draft of your findings: A local conference or a presentation to other staff in your library can be a great way to test-drive your findings. Do your findings “make sense” to others who have not been part of your project all along? What questions do they ask? What else do they want to know? This kind of feedback can 1) take you back to your data to examine it from a new perspective; 2) give you ideas for adapting your data to a specific publication venue; and 3) generate ideas for your next project, which might build on this first one.
After you have a rough draft of your proposal or paper: Feedback on writing is almost always useful, and a second (or third!) set of eyes on your final product can help raise questions that should be addressed before submission. If your friendly readers have questions, chances are your peer reviewers will have similar questions. Feedback before submission can help speed up the peer review process and reduce the amount of revision you need to do before your work is accepted for publication.
If you already took Course 1, Lesson 3 on Meeting Your Research Goals by Prioritizing Reflection & Community, take another look at the research ecosystem you created. If you haven’t taken that lesson yet, open the 1.3.3: Research Support Ecosystem worksheet in your LPOL Workbook and fill it out.Identify some members of your support network who may be particularly helpful in providing feedback at points in your project where you feel it may be beneficial.
Now revisit your project timeline and add in some “cushion” — extra time at the points in your project where you anticipate you’ll want to get feedback.You might not need it, but it may also encourage you to make adjustments earlier in your timeline to ensure you can meet your deadlines.
How to ask for feedback
Developing relationships
Some projects and researchers benefit from long-term partnerships. These partnerships could include accountability partners, research mentors available through an association, or what is described in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning literature as a “critical friend” (Costa and Kallick 1993). The overall goal of these relationships is to have someone thoroughly and holistically understand the project, understand its value, and help you better understand your own work by asking questions, critiquing the work, and helping you see the project from a new perspective.
For these partnerships to work, there must be trust between the researcher and the individual providing feedback, and it can be helpful to outline shared expectations, including frequency of feedback, format of feedback, and goals of the researcher.
How to use feedback
The goal of any type of feedback is to get you as a researcher thinking about your project in new ways. Feedback can alert you to errors in your understanding or in your data analysis, which should be fixed before sharing the research in a public venue, but it can also just provide input on writing style and phrasing that can help your writing be accessible to a wider audience. Sometimes feedback can completely change how you approach your work, shaping it into something you may never have arrived at on your own.
How to reject feedback
Sometimes, however, feedback is off base for one reason or another. The person providing feedback may have misunderstood something basic about the project, or they may have a vision for this work that is different from yours. You don’t have to accept all feedback that you receive, and this is a skill that you’ll strengthen as you continue to research and build your confidence in this area. Trust yourself, trust your ideas, and be open to the feedback you receive. But in the end, you are responsible for what is published or presented, and you must remain true to your ideas. If you choose not to incorporate certain feedback, remember to thank the person for their time, and be prepared to explain why you don’t think the feedback is a good fit for your project.
Topic 2 References
Bastone, Zoe, “I Can Do This! Doing Research as a Non-tenure-track librarian. A Librarian Parlor Series, Part II,” The Librarian Parlor. September 2019. https://libparlor.com/2019/09/10/i-can-do-this-doing-research-as-a-non-tenure-track-librarian-a-librarian-parlor-series-part-ii/
Costa, Arthur L. and Bena Kallick. “Through the Lens of a Critical Friend.” ASCD 51, no. 2 (1993). https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/through-the-lens-of-acritical-friend?limit=all