Psychology students’ perception of and engagement with feedback as a function of year of study

Undergraduate students’ perception of feedback and level of engagement with the feedback they receive have gained increasing attention in the educational literature recently to identify areas which require educators’ attention. However, research in this area has generally been based on limited self-selecting samples, and has not considered how students’ relationship with feedback may alter depending on their year of study. To address this, a survey measuring students’ views and practices regarding feedback was completed at a higher education institution by 447 first-, second- and third-year psychology students, representing 77% of the cohort. Findings revealed that third years responded more negatively in both areas than their first- and second-year counterparts, whose ratings on these aspects themselves were far from optimal. These findings highlight the need for early interventions to improve students’ perception of and engagement with feedback in the earlier years, and to prevent the recorded deterioration later on in the degree course.     

When teachers learn how to provide classroom structure in an autonomy-supportive way: Benefits to teachers and their students

In two experimentally-based and longitudinally-designed studies, secondary-level PE teachers were randomly assigned to participate or not in a new intervention to help them learn all of the following: support autonomy, provide structure, and provide structure in an autonomy-supportive way. In Study 1, teachers who participated in the intervention showed longitudinal gains in all five hypothesized teacher benefits (e.g., teaching efficacy, job satisfaction). In Study 2, students of teachers who participated in the intervention showed longitudinal gains in all four hypothesized student benefits (e.g., classroom engagement, skill development). Overall, teachers and students benefited after teachers provided structure in an autonomy-supportive way.     

Gender differences in an introductory programming course: New teaching approach,students’ learning outcomes,and perceptions

This study reports on gender differences in an introductory programming (IP) course that uses a new teaching and learning approach based on the ADRI (Approach, Deployment, Result, Improvement) model. The teaching materials of the IP course were redesigned based on the new approach. The grades of the final exam were compared to determine the impact of the new teaching and learning approach on genders. A survey was conducted to collect students’ feedback. The responses of the survey were compared for each question among genders and T-test and Mann-Whitney U test were used to analyse the data. The results show that female students performed better in the high achiever category and male students performed better in the medium and low achiever categories in the final exam. The survey responses indicated that male students were more satisfied than female students with the new teaching and learning approach. The four stages of the ADRI approach support students’ cognitive gains and engagement. The students’ retention was higher which supports students’ affective engagement in the IP course. Overall, both the female and male students appreciate the ADRI approach in the IP course.     

The development of academics’ feedback literacy: experiences of learning from critical feedback via scholarly peer review

Abstract

The emerging literature related to feedback literacy has hitherto focused primarily on students’ engagement with feedback, and yet an analysis of academics’ feedback literacy is also of interest to those seeking to understand effective strategies to engage with feedback. Data from concept map-mediated interviews and reflections, with a team of six colleagues, surface academics’ responses to receiving critical feedback via scholarly peer review. Our findings reveal that feedback can be visceral and affecting, but that academics employ a number of strategies to engage with this process. This process can lead to actions that are both instrumental, enabling academics to more effectively ‘play the game’ of publication, as well as to learning that is more positively and holistically developmental. This study thus aims to open up a dialogue with colleagues internationally about the role of feedback literacy, for both academics and students. By openly sharing our own experiences we seek to normalise the difficulties academics routinely experience whilst engaging with critical feedback, to share the learning and strategies which can result from peer review feedback, and to explore how academics may occupy a comparable role to students who also receive evaluation of their work.     

Effects of elicited reflections combined with tutor or peer feedback on self-regulated learning and learning outcomes

This study investigated the effects of students' reflections, combined with suggestive feedback, on the development of self-regulated learning and learning outcomes. Suggestive feedback alerts students that further reflection is advisable, without being very directive. Forty-nine students participated in a regular web-based distance education course on work psychology. In two experimental conditions students were prompted to reflect on their learning process, and received feedback on their reflections, either from peer students or a tutor. These conditions were compared to a control condition in which students studied the regular course without reflection and feedback. In line with the hypothesis, results showed that reflection combined with feedback positively affected students' self-regulated learning. In addition, students in the condition with tutor feedback outperformed students in both other conditions on learning outcomes.     

Understanding student engagement with peer feedback on master’s theses: a Macau study

While research on peer feedback in second language (L2) writing at university/college level has proliferated, scholars have conducted less research on peer feedback in L2 academic and scholarly writing. Drawing upon multiple sources of data including semi-structured interviews, stimulated recalls, online interviews via WeChat, first and revised drafts of master’s theses, peer written feedback, audio-recordings of oral peer feedback conferences and the finalised master’s theses, this case study examines how three master’s students affectively, behaviourally and cognitively engaged with peer feedback on drafts of their thesis in a Master of Education programme at a Macau university. The findings show that the relationship between sub-constructs within each dimension and the relationships between the three dimensions of student engagement were interconnected in a dynamic and complex way. While there were individual differences among the three students’ engagement, their affective engagement could promote or negatively influence their behavioural and cognitive engagement. This study builds our understanding of the multifaceted nature of master’s students’ engagement with peer feedback. It provides pedagogical implications about how peer feedback can enhance the quality of master’s students’ academic writing and sheds light on how to guide students to establish scholarly learning communities in higher education.     

Perceived teacher feedback and academic performance: the mediating effect of learning engagement and moderating effect of assessment characteristics

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the mediating effect of learning engagement on the relationship between perceived teacher feedback and college students’ academic performance, and the moderating effect of assessment characteristics on the relationship between perceived teacher feedback and learning engagement. A sample of 2,458 students in a university in mainland China was studied. Results indicated that perceived teacher feedback had a positive impact on students’ academic performance; learning engagement had a mediating effect on the relationship between perceived teacher feedback and students’ academic performance; and assessment frequency, difficulty and diversity had moderating effects between perceived teacher feedback and learning engagement. With the three factors of high frequency, difficulty and diversity assessment, perceived teacher feedback was more likely to improve students’ learning engagement. In contrast, feedback without these three factors could decrease or have no impact on students’ learning engagement. This indicates that teacher feedback indirectly affects college students’ academic performance by promoting their learning engagement, and is more effective when the frequency, difficulty or diversity of assessments is high.     

Building a Culture of Engagement through Participatory Feedback Processes

In response to school environments in which teachers and students feel disconnected from the learning process, we developed a three-part curriculum feedback system with the goal of creating a school-wide culture of engagement through participatory feedback processes. Here we describe the barriers to participation and ownership that are addressed by our curriculum feedback process, provide a rationale for each component of the multi-prong feedback process, and illustrate how each part of the feedback system was implemented in our pilot schools. We argue that addressing feedback regularly, optimizing the process to be user-friendly, and demonstrating appreciation for positive and constructive feedback can help any curriculum supervisor foster a school-wide culture of engagement among teachers and students.     

A role for technology in enhancing students’ engagement with feedback

This paper explores the potential of technology-enabled feedback to improve student learning. ‘Technology, Feedback, Action!: The impact of learning technology upon students’ engagement with their feedback’ aimed to evaluate how a range of technical interventions might encourage students to engage with feedback and formulate actions to improve future learning. The study used qualitative methods and worked in partnership with 23 undergraduate students to explore their experiences of receiving different forms of feedback with varying degrees of technical intervention including, but not limited to, electronic feedback with grades withheld; online grade publication; criteria-based feedback; and more traditional feedback methods. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, student participants were encouraged to articulate their experiences of feedback. The online publication of grades and feedback and the adaptive release of grades were found to significantly enhance students’ engagement with their feedback. Data were analysed using a thematic approach, and the main themes were used to inform the development of a series of good practice guides. The findings are discussed in the context of current literature.     

Using methodological triangulation to examine the effectiveness of a mentoring program for online instructors

In this quasi-experimental mixed methods study, we examined the effectiveness of a faculty-to-faculty mentoring program to increase student success rates in online courses at an American university. Over one semester, 24 faculty mentees worked with 6 faculty mentors on improving course organization and implementing student engagement techniques. Using methodological triangulation, we found positive results for two of our effectiveness measures (i.e., mentor and mentee feedback and mentors’ ratings of mentees’ courses). However, in terms of our third measure (i.e., student learning data), although institutional data showed that there was a 4.1% aggregate increase in online student success after the intervention, the intervention group made no significantly greater gains than two control groups. Our findings highlight some benefits and shortcomings of these types of university initiatives and also emphasize the importance of using triangulation to integrate participant feedback with formal measures of student success.     

Effects of instructional conditions and experience on student reflection: a video annotation study

This article reports on the findings of a study that investigated the effects of instructional conditions and prior experience on students’ self-reflection. The study was conducted with the use of a video annotation tool that was used by undergraduate performing arts students to reflect on their video-recorded performances. The study shows a consistent positive effect of previous experience with the video annotation tool for engagement with reflection. Graded instructional conditions with feedback had a positive effect on increasing higher order reflections particularly for students with prior experience with the video annotation tool for reflective purposes. The finding suggests that when including reflection in the curriculum, it is important to consider introducing it at a program or degree level rather than individual courses in order to provide an opportunity for students to gain experience with reflection and any particular tool that is used (e.g., a video annotation tool). Furthermore, reflective tasks should be scaffolded into the curriculum with ample opportunity for formative feedback and summative assessment in order to encourage higher order thinking and foster students’ metacognitive awareness and monitoring for increased goal-setting and acknowledgement of the motive or effect of their observed behavior.     

Combatting Othering and Inspiring Hope: A Unique Approach to Teaching About Juvenile Justice

This case study was conducted to evaluate the experience of students in one university course about juvenile justice and one community partnership working together to create a unique learning experience for two very distinct groups of young adults. One of the groups involved justice-involved young men and their parole officers; the other group involved college students enrolled in the course. University students learned civic engagement is not charity, but rather it is working alongside a community partner toward a joint goal. All participants disrupted the “othering” that commonly exists between two such disparate groups. Finally, the community participants gained hope through experiencing a college course firsthand and being able to see themselves as college students. The success of this collaboration was demonstrated thoroughly through informal feedback, formal reflections, course evaluations, and participant observation.     

Student perspectives on formative feedback as part of writing portfolios

Despite the crucial role that students play in formative assessment practices, student perspectives on such practices are relatively under-researched. Through a qualitative analysis of 128 reflection notes written by student teachers of English, this article investigates the students’ perceptions of formative feedback as part of portfolio assessment at two teacher education institutions in Norway. As such, it contributes to bridging the gap between research and practice. Students received peer and teacher feedback on assignments and wrote reflection notes during the semester. Findings show that students are positive towards teacher feedback and highlight the significance of teacher praise. Main objections raised against peer feedback concern the lack of constructive criticism. However, positive attitudes towards peer discussion groups suggest that they may be a more effective way of implementing peer assessment than formalised written peer commentary. Student reflections suggest that a failure to understand the task and the feedback is a possible hindrance to successfully revising assignments. Overall, students’ positive attitudes towards the portfolio process, which includes multiple drafting, suggest that students in higher education would benefit from more opportunities to revise and resubmit their work, yet they need adequate practice in providing peer feedback, and interpreting and implementing feedback in general.     

Undergraduate research as a student engagement springboard: Exploring the longer-term reported benefits of participation in a research conference

ABSTRACT

Background: Undergraduate research is evident in many forms across higher education: in journals, at conferences and on research placements. It is widely reported that undergraduate research can encourage the development of discipline-specific and transferable communication skills and, in some cases, a more complex development of higher-order critical appraisal. Recent studies of extracurricular undergraduate research conferences have also found that participants report a development of self-authorship and an appreciation of the conference as liminal and transformative space. With many published studies measuring immediate feedback surrounding conference events, there is also a need to explore participants’ reflections over a longer term period of time.

Purpose: This small-scale project investigated participants’ self-report of whether and in what ways participation in a non-assessed, extracurricular undergraduate research conference had impacted their academic and professional practices, one year after their involvement in the conference.

Method: The qualitative study took place over two academic years with participants from an undergraduate conference which was held annually. The investigation adopted an action research methodology and completed two cycles of research. Data were collected firstly through an online survey with open questions, yielding feedback from 44 respondents. Focus groups were then conducted with nine of these students to explore this data further. A thematic approach was used to analyse the data.

Findings: The two cycles of data collection and analyses resulted in the identification of four central themes: (1) general positive impact on studies or career; (2) the development of presentation skills and personal confidence; (3) the development of research skills and perspectives; (4) an increased engagement with extracurricular opportunities.

Conclusions: Overall, our analysis identified that participants reported a development in communication skills and an enhanced relationship with the concept of ‘research’ and self-authorship. Students’ report that participation directly led to increased engagement with additional extracurricular activities is particularly noteworthy, as it contributes something new to the growing body of literature surrounding undergraduate research. More widely, the study suggests the potential for undergraduate conferences to act as springboards for increased extracurricular engagement.     

Can performance feedback during instruction boost knowledge acquisition? Contrasting criterion-based and social comparison feedback

Feedback indicating how well students are performing during a learning task can be very stimulating. In this study with a pre- and post-test design, the effects of two types of performance feedback on learning results were compared: feedback during a learning task was either stated in terms of how well the students were performing relative to other students (social comparison feedback) or relative to an absolute criterion (criterion-based feedback). Thirty-four students in secondary vocational engineering education were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In both conditions, students worked together in small groups. All groups completed a math learning task, during which they received either social comparison feedback or criterion-based performance feedback. The findings showed that the type of feedback had a strong effect on learning outcomes: the post-test scores and gains of students in the social comparison condition were significantly higher than those of students in the criterion-based feedback condition.     

A systematic review of self‐regulation strategies to improve academic outcomes of students with EBD

Self‐regulatory interventions have demonstrated numerous benefits for helping improve the academic performance of students. The purpose of this review was to report on the effectiveness and focus of academic self‐regulation interventions for children and adolescents with emotional and behavioural disorders. Thirty‐six studies published in 35 papers and involving 189 participants met inclusionary criteria. Overall, self‐regulation interventions showed moderate/medium effect size gains [percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND) 75%; standard mean difference (SMD) 2.27; Tau‐U 0.81] across academic subject areas. When assessing the effectiveness of self‐regulation interventions for addressing specific academic content areas, the largest ES gains were observed in reading (PND 93%; SMD 2.13; Tau‐U 0.94), although medium/moderate ES gains were observed in math (PND 71%; SMD 2.08; Tau‐U 0.70) and writing (PND 83%; SMD 2.57; Tau‐U 0.91). Self‐regulated strategy development, self‐monitoring interventions and strategy instruction were the predominant types of self‐regulation techniques implemented by researchers. There was evidence to support a claim of the generalisation and maintenance of findings. Implications, limitations and areas for future research are discussed.     

The effect of contextualized conversational feedback in a complex open-ended learning environment

Betty’s Brain is an open-ended learning environment in which students learn about science topics by teaching a virtual agent named Betty through the construction of a visual causal map that represents the relevant science phenomena. The task is complex, and success requires the use of metacognitive strategies that support knowledge acquisition, causal map construction, and progress monitoring. Previous research has established that middle school students struggle at such tasks without proper scaffolding and feedback. In Betty’s Brain, this feedback is provided by Betty and Mr. Davis, another virtual agent designed to provide guidance and suggestions as students work. This paper discusses our implementation of contextualized conversational (CC) feedback, and then presents the results of an experimental study exploring the effects of this feedback in two 8th-grade science classrooms. The results illustrate some advantages of the CC feedback in comparison with a baseline dialogue mechanism that presents similar strategies in a non-conversational, non-contextualized form. While both groups showed significant pre-to-post test learning gains, the difference in learning gains between the groups was not statistically significant. However, students who received CC feedback more often performed actions in accordance with the advised strategies, and they created higher quality causal maps.     

Evaluating student engagement and experiential learning in global classrooms: A qualitative case study

The global classroom is an emerging technology-based pedagogy used internationally by educational institutions. To evaluate a global classroom, we conducted a qualitative study using written reflections and semi-structured interviews of global classroom participants, based on two theoretical frameworks: Kearsley and Shneiderman’s engagement theory and Kolb’s experiential learning theory. We analyzed student reflections and transcribed interviews, using the software package, NVivo, with two objectives: (1) to evaluate if global classroom is engaging and experiential to students and (2) to elucidate how student engagement is fostered in the global classroom through experiential learning. Results illustrated a complex relationship between student engagement and experiential learning. During the experiential learning cycle, engagement theory (relate-create-donate) principles contributed to student engagement at varying levels and for different purposes. Based on the results of this study, we created a framework that demonstrates the interactivity of engagement theory and experiential learning theory to describe how student engagement featured in experiential learning during this global classroom, with strategies to maximize student engagement in experiential learning.     

The eye-mind of processing written feedback: Unraveling how students read and use feedback for revision

This research aims to promote our understanding of feedback engagement processes in writing tasks using a combination of online and offline measures, including eye-tracking, thinking-aloud, and text-analyses. Study 1 explored how sixteen students read, evaluate, and use feedback for revision. Results revealed three feedback processing strategies: (1) superficial processing (n = 6), which is characterized by reading feedback in a linear way, without critically rereading or revising the text, (2) local processing (n = 6) in which students switched between reading the comments and the commented text, and (3) deep processing (n = 4) in which students integrated the feedback with both commented and uncommented parts of the text and made more substantial revisions. In Study 2, we investigated the local and deep feedback reading strategy in more detail with 41 students using a within-subject design with different types of feedback. Results demonstrated the same strategies among students, but also that the focus of feedback affected students' revision behavior, above and beyond an individual feedback processing strategy. This finding is in line with previous research that emphasized the effects of feedback characteristics on students’ use of feedback. By triangulating various process measures, this research is one of the first that provides empirical evidence for different feedback processing strategies among students. These novel insights in individual feedback engagement processing can be used to extend and refine current theories on how, when, and why feedback works and for whom.     

Understanding the role of students’ reflections in their uptake of teacher written feedback

This study reports on the role of students’ reflections in their teacher written feedback. Informed by a qualitative case study approach, this study collected data from 18 students across a semester of an English-as-a-foreign language writing course at a university in China. In the course, teacher written feedback and students’ reflections were both informed by writing as a meaning-making process. The data sources included 72 pieces of student essays, 144 pieces of reflection written by the students, and post-semester interviews with the students. The study showed that engaging students in writing reflections was helpful for developing their knowledge of writing, although the process somewhat followed a zigzag trajectory. The exercise helped them transcend their previous knowledge repertoires, thereby assisting them in critically understanding their revision process and refining their knowledge of writing in response to the teacher’s written feedback. In particular, the students felt that the meaning-making-based reflections provided clear and accessible layers for them to understand the close relationship between language and content. As such, the students felt that they were able to harness their reflections as a written venue through which they could critically digest the teacher’s written feedback and develop their knowledge of writing as a meaning-making process while dialoguing with their instructor.