Time to Face Your Feedback: Combining the Benefits of Written and Face-To-Face Feedback in Teams

Feedback is critical for learning and skill development, yet providing constructive feedback that is accepted and considered by ratees and leads to improved behaviors and outcomes is not an easy task. Evaluation and feedback provision in teams is further complicated by the interdependence among team members and the limited ability of external evaluators to observe team processes and dynamics. In addition, there is no agreement on the best way to deliver feedback in teams, as both written and face-to-face feedback have their advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, we offer a method for delivering feedback in teams that achieves ‘the best of both worlds’ by combining the benefits of written and face-to-face feedback in an instructor-facilitated feedback session. We describe step-by-step the implementation of the feedback generation and delivery, followed by evidence of the effectiveness of our method.