In this seminar, Dr Rachel Moquin discusses the importance of feedback in educational settings with practical examples from medical education. She highlights two key objectives for her talk: first, defining feedback and differentiating it from advice, and second, exploring strategies for delivering feedback effectively in various educational contexts.
Dr Moquin emphasises that feedback is a supportive conversation aimed at increasing learners’ awareness of their developing competencies. She provides examples from clinical and medical education environments while making her insights applicable to broader educational fields. The seminar offers best practices for giving feedback, ensuring that it is constructive and focused on improvement rather than simply offering advice. Dr Moquin stresses the role of feedback in fostering personal and professional growth, particularly in high-stakes fields such as healthcare.
The session concludes with practical tips for educators on how to deliver meaningful feedback that supports learners’ progress and development.
[This summary was generated by AI and checked for accuracy and edited by a human.]
Abstract
Giving feedback is ubiquitous in education and is an important mechanism for supporting growth mindset, self-awareness, and meaningful reflection in learners. Often, when providing feedback, a tendency may be to jump into an advice-giving stance because we want to help our learners, and as we often have valuable knowledge and perspective to share. Reframing how we view the role and purpose of feedback is useful in steering away from the advice-giving that feedback can become. The distinction between feedback and advice can be subtle, but it is incredibly important for educators to understand the nuance and evaluate which is appropriate for specific learners in specific contexts. In this presentation, we will define feedback, differentiate feedback from advice, and explain the importance of the nuance.
About the speaker
Dr Rachel Moquin (EdD, MA) is the Associate Vice-Chair for Faculty and Educator Development and an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr Moquin received her Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Mississippi and her Doctoral degree in Education Leadership and Policy from Vanderbilt University. Her background is in education, specifically teaching and learning. She supports professional and faculty development programs across the School of Medicine, as well as supports culture improvement and has experience in developing educational capacity in others through mentoring and coaching. In her current role, she supports faculty development and faculty affairs and provides development for health professions educators in teaching practices, curriculum development, integration of learning theory into practice assessment and evaluation, and mentoring practices. Additionally, she supports the program evaluation and educational scholarship efforts of the Department and its faculty and educators. Her specific areas of interest include feedback practices, learning theory, faculty development, belonging and psychological safety, and qualitative research methodology. Follow her work on X and LinkedIn.
