The author of this study highlighted students’ overall dissatisfaction with receiving feedback and instructors’ frustration with giving feedback. Instructors from the University of Winchester in the participated in a focus group to discuss their perceptions of what effective feedback looks like in practice. This qualitative study found that instructors saw effective feedback as providing encouragement to students by acknowledging their strengths, informing students’ work, reflecting on learning/marking criteria, and engaging students in a variety of ways (e.g., reading and responding to feedback). Instructors saw feedback as helping students to improve their work in a timely manner as well as encouraging students to respond to the feedback by learning from it and applying it to future work. However, few instructors saw feedback as being a mutual or dialogic process (instructor-to-student or student-to-student interactions) despite the perceived importance of student engagement. Instructors seemed to see feedback as a transmission to the students with the expectation they act on the feedback in some way. However, instructors noted the emotional impact of feedback and believed it was important that feedback included some forms of encouragement to motivate learning.
A companion piece to the instructors’ perspectives published in 2011, the author discussed the students’ view of what makes feedback effective. The author noted that students were generally dissatisfied with the feedback they received for reasons unknown to the instructors, who believed they were giving feedback that was timely and informative. Year 2 and 3 students from the University of Winchester were surveyed using an online questionnaire devised by the researcher. Students responded that the most effective type of feedback was delivered verbally followed by written and email feedback. In particular, students noted the importance of one-to-one verbal and written feedback as being the most useful to their work and progress. Timeliness was also viewed as being quality of effectiveness with two weeks being seen as the optimal range of time to receive feedback on assignments. However, they also noted a lack of opportunity to apply the feedback to the next assignment (feed forward) and found it difficult to do better work. For handwritten feedback, students pointed out the importance of having legible writing although they preferred feedback to be typed when possible. In regards to encouragement, a number of students reported feeling confused when they were given “good” feedback when their grades were on the lower side or critical feedback with grades on the higher side.
The authors in this study conducted a large survey study with 406 instructors and 4514 students in two Australian universities. Inductive analysis was conducted using responses from 323 instructors and 400 students. The authors found that the majority of the participants saw feedback as a way to improve students’ work or their ability to do the work rather than simply as a grade or mark. Instructors and students did not specify feedback as a way for students to evaluate their own work. Feedback was not necessarily seen as forms of motivation or encouragement as only a small number of participants indicated feedback as having such affective qualities. On the question of what makes feedback effective, design, content of comments, and source of feedback information were the major factors identified in the study. Feedback design was the most prominent quality from the instructors’ perspectives, which included modalities of delivery (e.g., rubrics, face-to-face, digital recordings, etc.), timeliness, and contexts of delivery (e.g., peer feedback, simulation, workshops, etc.). Students, on the other hand, did not specifically mention feedback design as effective but saw timeliness and modalities of delivery as critical to their achievement. Specifically, students believed that high quality feedback was detailed and specific comments that addressed their learning needs.
The purpose of this study was to explore graduate students’ beliefs and perspectives about effective instructor feedback including what information needs to be included and how should the feedback be delivered. Graduate students in the Master of Nursing or the Master of Health Studies program were asked to complete 20 Likert-scale items and an open-ended response. The team of researchers triangulated the data and found 5 themes of effective instructor feedback: Student involvement and individuation, being positively constructive, gentle guidance, timeliness, and future orientation. More importantly, students noted that effective feedback was not a top-down process from the instructor to the learners but a mutual process in which students retained some sort of control over determining their assessment performance. The students also pointed out that an aspect of effective feedback was to clarify expectations and timelines.
The authors in this study examined the discordant views about feedback from students’ and instructors’ perspectives even though quality feedback impacted achievement. They noted that students generally view feedback as an unfavorable experience while instructors believe they put in immense effort and time in crafting feedback for learners. They defined feedback as part of the assessment process within the learning context and draws from a range of sources. The purpose of feedback is to inform the students of their achievement as well as bridge gaps in understanding and skill sets. The questionnaire was sent to 60 instructors and 1300 undergraduate students, which yielded responses from 26 instructors and 194 students. The authors found that instructors often had negative perceptions of students’ engagement with feedback even though students in this study did read and act on the feedback they received. The way the feedback was applied to work varied and it was hypothesized that they were not necessarily getting the most out of the feedback on their work. Both students and instructors believed that feedback should be delivered in a timely manner with constructive and encouraging feedbacks that provided detailed direction for improvement on future work (otherwise known as feed-forward).
The authors of this study examined the perceptions of effective feedback, differences in perceived effectiveness and relevance for self-regulated learning, modes of feedback delivery, and variations amongst different assessments. A questionnaire of 20 items and an open-response question was sent to 605 undergraduate students in five public universities in Portugal in different faculties (i.e., Biology, Education, Law, Economics, etc.). A 5-point Likert-scale was used to assess the students’ perceptions of modes and phases of feedback practices. A second questionnaire was sent to the participants to explore students’ experiences with traditional methods of assessment (e.g., tests and exams) and learner-centered assessments (e.g., portfolios and group projects). The authors found that students saw feedback as more effective on learner-centered assessments because of the continuous collaboration and interaction between instructors and students. Positive feedback was viewed as more effective and relevant to students’ work, which also contributed to their own self-regulated learning as they improved their work and corrected mistakes.
This study explores how students perceive written feedback in a mixed-methods study. From their survey data, the authors suggest that students may need guidance on how to understand and use feedback to improve their learning. However, instructors tend to see students as paying little attention to the feedback on their work and preferring to see their grade or marks instead. The authors sought to understand how do students understand the feedback written by their tutors and how they determine helpful from unhelpful feedback. Students in this study agreed that constructive feedback was important for their work but they found their tutors provided vague comments that at times lacked guidance, leaned too much on negative criticism, and seemed unrelated to the assessment criteria. Almost half of the student participants felt they did not receive enough help or instruction on how to interpret and apply feedback to their work. This finding counters the general assumption held by instructors that students know what to do with feedback when they receive it.