Large enrollment classes pose many challenges for marking, including consistency across multiple markers. With teaching assistants (TAs) and instructors working together to grade a large number of papers, it is important that teams provide similar feedback for students.

Growth mindset feedback is a school of thought where the emphasis is on creating a positive learning climate by facilitating reflection, creating an educational alliance, and focusing on a growth mindset. This type of feedback aims to create a safe learning environment by prioritizing learning and progress rather than basing feedback solely on performance.1 To support consistency in our large enrollment class, we used a template with growth mindset feedback phrases that could be modified for students. The template is provided in the Supplemental Digital Content (available at: http://links.lww.com/NE/B317). We met to review the main ideas behind growth mindset feedback and to create a shared understanding of our goals for marking. Our primary goals were to preserve student dignity and help students move forward to their next assignment. The template contained 2 types of phrases: sentence starters and phrases. The sentence starters provided a customizable start to feedback, which were helpful for starting targeted points. The phrases were useful to highlight common issues students experienced and how to approach those issues in future assignments. Overall, we found that students were more receptive to growth mindset feedback than deficit-focused feedback.

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