Manifesto for feedback in the age of GenAI

29 October 2025

Posted by

Margaret Bearman

In May 2025, Deakin University through CRADLE was a co-host of a feedback symposium in Copenhagen alongside University of Copenhagen, King’s College London and the University of Melbourne. Seventeen researchers with interests in higher education and health professional education came together to advance the agenda for future feedback research.

Among other topics, we discussed what feedback means in a time of rising technological mediation, particularly generative artificial intelligence with its ability to output feedback comments almost instantaneously. We reaffirmed our core values in this time, and then a subgroup of us went away and wrote a manifesto. These principles are not set in stone but may shift and change as we ourselves (and the world around us) develops. The ten principles are:

1	Feedback is a process not corrective comments
2	Feedback is a relational practice
3	Feedback can be messy, uncomfortable, challenging and joyous
4	Feedback should be an ethical practice
5	Feedback should promote learning over time
6	Feedback and associated technologies should be designed in conversations with learners and educators
7	Feedback engagement requires time and care
8	Learning, not technological efficiency or compliance, should drive thinking and decision-making regarding feedback processes
9	Feedback can be enhanced by digital technologies, but digital technologies do not always enhance feedback
10	More feedback is not necessarily better for learning

Thanks to all contributors and all members of the Symposium: Naomi Winstone, Margaret Bearman, Thomas Corbin, Renske de Kleijn, Walter Eppich, Rachelle Esterhazy, Catherine Gabelica, Karen Gravett, Lasse X Jensen, Anna Jones, Raj Kainth, Elizabeth Molloy, Kelli Nicola Richmond, Torsten Risør, Christy Noble, Amudha Poobalan and Gabriel Reedy.