I’ve been recommending the “Continue. Start. Stop.” feedback method for years an years (at least since my 2013 blog post), but not as a research-backed method but mostly based on my positive personal experience with it. I have used this method to get feedback on courses I’ve been teaching a couple of weeks into the course in order to improve my teaching both within the course as well as over the years. If there was anything that students thought would improve their learning, I wanted to be able adapt my teaching (and also, in a follow-up discussion of the feedback, be able to address student expectations that might not have been explicit before that I might or might not want to follow). I like that even though it’s a qualitative method and thus fairly open, it gives students a structure along which they can write their feedback. Also by asking what should be continued as well as stopped and started, it’s a nice way to get feedback on what’s already working well, too! But when I was asked for a reference for the method today, I didn’t really have a good answer. But then I found one: an article by Hoon et al. (2015)!

Studies on the “continue. start. stop.” feedback vs open feedback

In the first study in the article, two different feedback methods are compared over three different courses: a free form feedback and a structured format, similar to “continue. start. stop.”. From this study, the authors draw pointers for changing the feedback method in the free form course to a more structured feedback. They investigate the influence of this change in a second study.

In that second study, the authors find that using a structured feedback led to an increasing depth of feedback, and that the students liked the new form of giving feedback. They also find indications that the more specific the questions are, the more constructive (as compared to more descriptive texts in the open form; not necessarily more positive or negative!) the feedback is.

My recommendations for how to use the “continue. start. stop.” feedback

If anything, this article makes me like this feedback method even more than I did before. It’s easy and straight forward and actually super helpful!

Use this as formative feedback!

Ask for this feedback early on in the course (maybe after a couple of weeks, when students know what to expect in your course, but with plenty of the course left to actually react to the feedback) and use the student replies to help you improve your teaching. While this method can of course also be used as summative feedback at the end of the course, how much cooler is it if students can benefit from the feedback they gave you?

Ask full questions

One thing that I might not have been clear about before when talking about the “continue. start. stop.” feedback method is that it is important to actually use the whole phrases (“In order to improve your learning in this course, please give me feedback on the following points

1. Continue: What is working well in this course that you would like to continue?
2. Start: What suggestions do you have for things that could improve the course?
3. Stop: What would you like us to stop doing?”

or similar) rather than just saying “continue. start. stop.” and assuming the students know what that means.

Leave room for additional comments

It is also helpful to give an additional field for other comments the students might have, you never know what else they’d like to tell you if only they knew how and when to do it.

Use the feedback for several purposes at once!

In the article’s second study, a fourth question is added to the “continue. start. stop.” method, and that is asking for examples of good practice and highlights. The authors say this question was mainly included for the benefit of “external speakers who may value course feedback as evidence of their own professional development and engagement with education”, and I think that’s actually a fairly important point. While the “continue. start. stop.” feedback itself is a nice addition to any teaching portfolio, why not think specifically about the kind of things you would like to include there, and explicitly ask for them?

Give feedback on the feedback

It’s super important that you address the feedback you got with your class! Both so that they feel heard and know whether their own perception and feedback agrees with that of their peers, as well as to have the opportunity to discuss what parts of their suggestions you are taking on, what will be changing as a result of their suggestions, and what you might not want to change (and why!). If this does not happen, students might not give you good feedback the next time you ask for it because they feel that since it didn’t have an effect last time, why would they bother doing it again?

Now it’s your turn!

Have you used the “continue. start. stop.” method? How did it work for you? Will you continue using it or how did you modify it to make it suit you better? Let me know in the comments below! :-)

Reference:

Hoon, A. and Oliver, E.J. and Szpakowska, K. and Newton, P. (2015) ‘Use of the ‘Stop, Start, Continue’ method is associated with the production of constructive qualitative feedback by students in higher education.’, Assessment and evaluation in higher education., 40 (5). pp. 755-767. [link]