Is live feedback reducing workload, or just changing the paperwork trail?
Live feedback isn’t a marking strategy. It’s a response strategy!
Schools have embraced live feedback (often called “live marking”) to reduce written marking. It can work — but only when it is designed as a repeatable routine that creates immediate student action, not just teacher commentary.
Why live feedback fails!
Feed back, up, forward, action
The Education Endowment Foundation offers excellent guidance, but the ideas were out of date at the time of publication! A clearer model is the three feedback questions: feed up (Where am I going?), feedback (How am I going?), and feed forward (Where to next?). These help teachers design feedback that students can use immediately.
To help, take a look at this blog post image, and see if you can use the blank template in this blog post to generate 9 different techniques!
Workload reduces when feedback reliably produces student action. If students do not respond, teachers repeat instructions, re-explain, re-mark, or chase “evidence” for quality assurance — and the workload returns through the side door!
Live feedback also has an equity problem: the most confident students can absorb the most attention, while quieter students drift. A structured method protects time, standardises language, and improves consistency across subjects.
Three routines to standardise
1) Turn live feedback into a 30-second routine. Use a consistent script:
- Feed up: “What was the goal?”
- Feedback: “What’s the gap right now?”
- Feed forward: “What’s the next step you will do in the next 2 minutes?”
2) Design student responses, not teacher activity. Every feedback moment should trigger one student action: correct (fix), extend (apply), or explain (justify). This makes feedback visible in students’ work without extra marking.
3) Build time, trace, transfer. Feedback “counts” when there is time to respond, a visible trace of improved thinking, and a planned transfer moment (retrieval or a revisit later). This is how live feedback becomes sustainable.
“It doesn’t matter what type of feedback teachers use; what matters most is whether students trust the feedback, and know how to act.”
Read more in Guide To Feedback.
