An investigation into written comments on assignments: do students find them usable?

Students’ response to the feedback they receive on written assignments is an important but relatively under‐researched aspect of teaching and learning. This paper presents an analysis of over 3000 written comments made on 106 assignments in three course modules in a Technology faculty, and also the results of telephone interviews with 43 of the students whose commented assignment had been analysed. The interviews explored how usable students found the comments, including their response to specific comments that their tutor had made on the assignment. When the results from the interviews were matched to the types of comment found in the analysis, it became apparent that students find some types of comment considerably more usable. These findings are discussed in the light of the current state of assessment practice, and possible future avenues for research in this area are suggested.     

Online self-assessment and peer-assessment as a tool to enhance student-teachers’ assessment skills

Self-assessment and peer-assessment are strategies employed to encourage students to take more responsibility for the learning process. Although the advantages are not obvious, the process has the potential to empower learning and to assist the development of assessment skills, which are so important for future teachers. The research aimed to identify student-teachers' attitudes concerning the contribution of self-assessment and anonymous peer-assessment to the quality of their assignments and improvement of their assessment skills, using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The sample included 300 students studying for bachelor’s or master’s degrees. Texts that were analysed included: responses to a questionnaire, self and peer-assessments, word comments on the assignments and written blog content relating to students’ activities and their performance of peer evaluations. The students noted that they significantly benefitted from the process, learned various methods of assignment and assessment performance and it positioned them in relation to others, noticing how others evaluated them. Anonymous evaluation allowed students to overcome inhibitions in evaluating peers' works and improved their assessment skills.     

Investigating the relationship between quality,format and delivery of feedback for written assignments in higher education

Feedback can have a great impact on student learning. However, in order for it to be effective, feedback needs to be of high quality. Electronic marking has been one of the latest adaptations of technology in teaching and offers a new format of delivering feedback. There is little research investigating the impact the format of feedback has on quality of feedback and subsequently on student learning. This study sets out to investigate the impact paper-based and electronic methods of assignment submission and return have on students’ and markers’ perceived quality of feedback. Students and markers on an undergraduate course were asked to complete an anonymous online survey investigating their perceptions of quality, format and timeliness of feedback delivered electronically and on paper. The results showed that marking and providing feedback electronically was an acceptable method for markers, reporting improved speed and consistency of marking. There was no increase or decrease in satisfaction with the feedback received. Overall, electronic marking was found to be an acceptable method of delivery of feedback on written assignments by both students and markers. The findings of this study suggest that electronic marking can result in more timely feedback for students without impacting on quality.     

Do students value feedback? Student perceptions of tutors’ written responses

The topic of feedback to students is an under‐researched area, and there has been little empirical research published which focuses on student perceptions. This study explores student perceptions of written feedback and examines whether feedback received demonstrated a student‐centred approach to learning. A multi‐method approach of qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis was used to survey 44 students in the faculties of Business and Art & Design. Student responses show feedback is valued, but believed tutor comments could be more helpful. Survey results indicate that students may need advice on understanding and using feedback before they can engage with it. Content analysis of feedback samples and student responses uncovered four main themes of feedback considered unhelpful to improve learning: comments which were too general or vague, lacked guidance, focused on the negative, or were unrelated to assessment criteria. It is suggested that by focusing on messages conveyed by their writing, providing feedback set in the context of assessment criteria and learning outcomes, and by ensuring that it is timely, tutors could greatly improve the value of feedback.     

‘It has a purpose beyond justifying a mark’: examining the alignment between the purpose and practice of feedback

Abstract

Research has shown that written feedback is important for student learning and development. However, the messages embedded in feedback may lead to students being misled about what they need to learn or how they need to develop. This article reports on a small-scale investigation into the messages embedded in feedback. Legitimation Code Theory was used to first conceptualise the often-hidden purpose of a discipline (English Studies), and concomitantly of feedback within the discipline, and second to analyse actual comments given to first-year students on their assignments. It was found that there is a clear misalignment between the purpose and practice of feedback, thereby suggesting that students are receiving misleading messages about what they need for success within the discipline. This may have implications beyond merely passing the module. A suggestion is made to actively consider, and develop, feedback as a discipline-specific literacy.     

大学英语写作中评语对学生的影响研究

本研究以45名学生为研究对象,对比研究教师给出评语、同学互相给出评语和英语专业高年级学生给出评语对二语写作的影响。实验结果表明三种语语对提高学生语法的应用能力和内容写作水平无积极作用。原因为这三种方法各有利弊;传统的“一次性”写作不要求学生重写作文,导致学生对评语不重视;同时,这三种评语对学生注意并未产生较大影响。本研究提出了给出评语的新模式。     

Book Reviews

Perceptions of the role and efficacy of written feedback in teaching and learning among teaching staff in British higher education institutions have not been extensively researched. In the present study 48 lecturers in one university and from a cross-section of disciplinary backgrounds were interviewed with respect to their lived experiences with writing assessment feedback. Like most universities, theirs has a stated commitment to academic excellence by, among other things, ensuring timely and useful feedback on assignments. The findings suggest, however, that institutional policies and departmental practices related to formative assessment in this respect are not having the intended effect. Teachers have varied perceptions and beliefs about the purposes of written feedback, and are uncertain about what it achieves and what use students make of it. Far from enhancing written feedback, innovative practices and procedures have created new problems for teachers. There is a clear need for continuing research in this area.     

The Focus of Teacher and Student Concerns in Discipline-Specific Writing by University Students

There has been considerable research into teacher feedback on student writing. Very little of this research has been done in those university classes focusing on the development of understanding of disciplinary content, especially in Australia. Furthermore, the relationship of feedback comments and assignment purposes has not been investigated for content classes. Nor is there much research on student understanding of the purposes of assignments and their expectations about the kinds of items that teachers will comment on. This study examines the interrelated aspects of the purposes of assignments, teacher feedback comments, and student perceptions and expectations. Data were collected in two university subjects. The findings show that in both subjects teachers and students broadly agreed on the purposes of the assignment. However, teacher feedback comments did not fully correspond to the purposes for the assignments, nor did feedback match students' expectations about the aspects of writing on which they predicted that their teachers might comment.     

Understanding classroom feedback practices: A study of New Zealand student experiences,perceptions, and emotional responses

While feedback is a key factor for improving student learning, little is known about how students understand and experience feedback within the classroom. This study analysed 193 New Zealand primary and secondary students’ survey responses alongside drawings of their understandings and experiences of feedback to examine how they experience, understand, and respond to feedback. It found that despite New Zealand’s strong commitment to student-centred Assessment for Learning practices, the majority of students still drew, selected, and endorsed teacher-led feedback practices, with pictures dominated by written comments or grades. However, they generally depicted and described this feedback as positive and constructive, suggesting that negative emotional responses to evaluative comments and grades may be lessened if students perceive such feedback will help them improve.     

Effectively feeding forward from one written assessment task to the next

Most studies into lecturers’ written feedback focus on the types of feedback found to be effective when students have the opportunity to act on that feedback, revise their written assignment and improve the mark they receive. But often students do not have this opportunity. Typically, they receive a mark and feedback on an assignment that they will never be able to rework and resubmit. This can leave students unsure about what to do with the feedback they receive. This paper reports on the use of high impact written feedback from lecturers that significantly improved student outcomes and grades from one assessment task to the next. It examines a range of factors which together make feedback in this context effective including: assessment design, use of grading standards and tutor training. These findings from a very large unit have significant implications for teaching staff who want to use feedback to feed forward and make a real difference to their students’ learning.     

‘My work is bleeding’: exploring students’ emotional responses to first-year assignment feedback

This paper explores the emotional responses that assignment feedback can provoke in first-year undergraduates. The literature on the link between emotions and learning is well established, but surprisingly research on the relationship between emotions and feedback is still relatively scarce. This article aims to make an additional contribution to this emerging field. Semi-structured interviews with 24 first-year undergraduate students from the Humanities and Social Sciences department in a post-1992 institution were conducted. The interview narratives identified how the emotional impact of feedback was related to: prior experiences of education, the significance participants attached to the feedback received on their first assignment and how their interpretations of feedback comments were linked to beliefs about themselves as learners. The implications of these experiences on student ‘belonging’ and learning are discussed. The underlying themes that emerged from the findings are the polarised emotions of anxiety and confidence. Based on the findings, the paper concludes by making recommendations for reconceptualising feedback on first-year assignments. It suggests that a holistic assessment approach, which incorporates timely feedback indicating if students are ‘on the right lines’ with low-stakes assignments, is a practice that may both reduce anxiety and increase confidence to support students.     

Using Opinion Mining as an educational analytic: An integrated strategy for the analysis of students’ feedback

The analysis of students’ feedback written in natural language has been poorly considered in academic institutions, looking more frequently at students’ ratings as a base to evaluate courses and instructors. Statistical text analyses offer the possibility of exploring text collections from a quantitative viewpoint. Particularly interesting is Opinion Mining (OM), a family of techniques at the crossroads of Statistics, Linguistics and Computer Science. OM allows evaluating the sentiment of individual opinions, highlighting their semantic orientation. In an educational context, this approach allows processing students’ comments and creating powerful analytics. This paper aims at introducing readers to OM, presenting a strategy to compute the sentiment polarity of students’ comments. After explaining the rationale of the proposal and its mathematical formalisation, a toy example is presented to show how it works in practice. A discussion about theoretical and empirical implications offers some hints about its potentiality in a learning environment.     

“Commenting on your work is a waste of time only!”: An appraisal-based study of evaluative language in supervisory feedback

Research on supervisory feedback on master’s theses, especially attitudinal stances conveyed in such feedback, is thin on the ground. Students’ construal of their supervisors’ attitudes, however, can have a profound impact on their engagement with supervisory feedback. Drawing on the appraisal framework, which characterizes attitudinal meanings in terms of affect (i.e., emotional responses), judgement (i.e., normative evaluation of human behaviors) and appreciation (i.e., aesthetically-/socially-based evaluation of objects and products), this study examined Nepalese supervisors’ attitudinal stances communicated in written comments on master’s thesis drafts (n = 76) submitted by English-as-a-foreign-language students and oral feedback on proposal and thesis defences (n = 89). Quantitative analyses revealed that while instances of appreciation dominated in the supervisors’ use of evaluative language, judgements were also frequent, with affective responses trailing far behind. In both the oral feedback and written comments, significant disciplinary variations were observed for certain types of judgment and appreciation. These findings are discussed in terms of disciplinary culture and the potential impact of the attitudinal stances on students’ learning. Implications are derived for the productive framing of supervisory feedback to facilitate students’ feedback uptake.     

英文写作元认知与同伴互评书面评语的关联性研究

基于元认知理论框架的英文写作元认知知识由个体知识、 任务知识、 策略知识三个变量构成,当这三个变量共同作用于个体认知活动中的某项具体写作行为时, 促使写作行为发生的学习模式会对学习者的英文写作过程产生影响。本文基于一项同伴互评学习模式下的英文书面评语写作活动的实证个案研究,探讨了同伴互评学习模式与英文写作元认知因素的关联及学生的英文书面评语的话语倾向对写作元认知知识构建的影响因素。     

Feedback loops and the longer-term: towards feedback spirals

A key challenge for feedback practice involves promoting student uptake through the closing of feedback loops. This paper investigates feedback loops by using the concepts of single and double-loop learning to interrogate student responses to feedback. Single-loop learning tackles an identified problem or task, whereas double-loop learning additionally re-evaluates how the problem or task is approached. Evidence from a five-year longitudinal enquiry into four undergraduate students’ experiences of feedback is used to analyse feedback loops. Students reported a variety of experiences: failing to engage significantly with end-of-semester comments; short-term uptake within modules which had two assignments; and longer-term efforts at improving their learning strategies. A model of long-term student engagement with feedback is proposed, including single-loop feedback processes, double-loop feedback processes and unresolved learning puzzles. Whereas feedback loops are mainly focused on the shorter-term, it is suggested that feedback spirals represent an alternative way of analysing complex, iterative longer-term learning processes. Implications for practice focus on student self-regulation and the development of student feedback literacy.     

Videomail — a personalised approach to providing feedback on assessment to distance learners

Videomail involves lecturers providing feedback on learners’ assignments by making a short videotape as an alternative to written comments alone. This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of videomail with a small sample of lecturers and distance learners in university programmes. In addition the authors were interested in establishing some principles for the use of videomail from the lecturer's perspective. Using approaches based on Grounded Theory and action research, reactions by lecturers and learners were collected. Videomail was felt to be an extremely valuable and personalised method of obtaining feedback by learners. Lecturers were able to use a wide variety of communication techniques such as self‐disclosure and reflection, for example, not available to them using written feedback only. It is concluded that written feedback can be enhanced by videomail and that videomail provides an additional vehicle for student learning and a means of establishing personal contact with learners at a distance.     

Closing the feedback loop: physics undergraduates’ use of feedback comments on laboratory coursework

The laboratory notebooks of physics undergraduates taking two second-year practical courses were audited to discover whether they had used feedback comments in their subsequent coursework. Ninety-five per cent of the 37 students on the first course and 100% of the 14 students on the second course whose work was audited had used feedback. The marker’s comments were classified into two groups based on whether they addressed simple (mastery) or complex (developmental) learning outcomes. Mastery comments were more likely to be acted on than developmental comments which aimed to extend students’ skills and understanding to higher levels. This has implications for the use of feedback audit as a quality control process, since the feedback which is most commonly applied by students is not the most valuable for the development of higher order skills. Following reflection on the results for the first course, students taking the second course were given responsibility for checking their peers’ notebooks against preset criteria. Peer checking improved students’ marks but did not eliminate the need for mastery feedback. It is argued that a direct audit of students’ use of feedback is particularly valuable when undertaken by the teacher who provides the feedback.     

‘Now that’s the feedback I want!’ Students’ reactions to feedback on graded work and what they do with it

Since the introduction of the National Student Survey (NSS) in 2005, like many other institutions, the university where this study took place has expended substantial effort in improving the quality of feedback to students. However, despite much research, changes in pedagogical approaches and shifts in conceptual understanding related to feedback practice, assessment and feedback still receive the lowest satisfaction ratings in the NSS. Lecturers are discouraged when students fail to take note of their feedback, or sometimes do not collect assignments that have been marked. Understanding why feedback is not always acted upon remains an important area for researchers. This paper reports on an in-depth interview study with 14 final year undergraduates, reflecting on their perceptions of feedback written on marked assignments, by selecting examples of what they considered to be ‘good’ and ‘bad’ work. Findings suggested that emotional reactions play a significant part in determining how students will act on the feedback they receive, and the concept of ‘emotional backwash’ is introduced.     

Peer feedback on academic writing: undergraduate students’ peer feedback role,peer feedback perceptions and essay performance

Within the higher education context, peer feedback is frequently applied as an instructional method. Research on the learning mechanisms involved in the peer feedback process has covered aspects of both providing and receiving feedback. However, a direct comparison of the impact that providing and receiving peer feedback has on students’ writing performance is still lacking. The current study compared the writing performance of undergraduate students (N = 83) who either provided or received anonymous written peer feedback in the context of an authentic academic writing task. In addition, we investigated whether students’ peer feedback perceptions were related to the nature of the peer feedback they received and to writing performance. Results showed that both providing and receiving feedback led to similar improvements of writing performance. The presence of explanatory comments positively related both to how adequate students perceived the peer feedback to be, as well as to students’ willingness to improve based upon it. However, no direct relation was found between these peer feedback perceptions and students’ writing performance increase.