Effects of performance feedback valence on perceptions of invested mental effort

We investigated whether the valence of performance feedback provided after a task, would affect participants’ perceptions of how much mental effort they invested in that same task. In three experiments, we presented participants with problem-solving tasks and manipulated the presence and valence of feedback between conditions (no, positive, or negative feedback valence), prior to asking them to rate how much mental effort they invested in solving that problem. Across the three experiments–with different problem-solving tasks and participant populations–we found that subjective ratings of effort investment were significantly higher after negative than after positive feedback; ratings given without feedback fell in between. These findings show that feedback valence alters perceived effort investment (possibly via task perceptions or affect), which can be problematic when effort is measured as an indicator of cognitive load. Therefore, it seems advisable to measure mental effort directly after each task, before giving feedback on performance.     

The effect of team feedback and guided reflexivity on team performance change

Providing teams with feedback has been forwarded as a powerful practice to improve their learning and performance. Yet, this learning potential may not be realized unless teams actively process this feedback by stepping back from their team activity, building plans, and ultimately putting them into action. In an experimental study (N = 212 undergraduate students), we compared the effects of team-level feedback with or without an intervention prompting shared reflection on the feedback (i.e., guided reflexivity) to a no feedback control group on team performance growth. The results showed that only the combination of team performance feedback and guided reflexivity lead to performance change, at the beginning of team activity. These findings suggest that prompting feedback processing at an early stage of collaborative work has the power to help teams benefit from their past experiences and improve performance.     

A multi-study examination of intra-individual feedback loops between competence and value beliefs,procrastination, and goal achievement

In the present study, we tested intra-individual feedback loops between competence beliefs, value beliefs, and goal achievement (virtuous circles), and intra-individual feedback loops between goal failure and procrastination (vicious circle). We analyzed data from five independent intensive longitudinal studies with university students (N = 841, k = 23,448 observations). Pre-registered hypotheses were tested across the five studies and aggregated using meta-analytic methods. Results provided support for virtuous circles in self-regulated learning: Students who reported higher competence and value beliefs in one study session reported higher goal achievement, and higher goal achievement predicted higher competence and value beliefs in the subsequent study session. Results provided only partial support for a vicious circle: Procrastination was associated with lower goal achievement but goal achievement did not predict subsequent procrastination. The results have theoretical implications for models of self-regulated learning and methodological implications for the design of experience sampling studies.     

A diffractive reading of dialogical feedback through the political ethics of care

With regard to improving higher education feedback practices, there is an increasing interest in using the efficacy of dialogue rather than the more traditional unidirectional approaches. We build on this impetus by considering how the ethics of care can be used to analyse the dialogical aspects of feedback. By diffractively reading insights of Boud and Molloy [2013a. “What is the Problem with Feedback?” In Feedback in Higher and Professional Education: Understanding it and Doing it Well, edited by D. Boud, and E. Molloy, 1–10. London: Routledge; Boud, D., and E. Molloy. 2013b. “Rethinking Models of Feedback for Learning: The Challenge of Design.” Assessment &; Evaluation in Higher Education 38 (6): 698–712] on dialogic feedback through the moral elements of care ethics, this paper proposes a novel way of discerning the extent to which the dialogical giving and receiving of feedback contributes to learning. To illustrate this, we draw on experiences from an Emerging Technologies professional development course for higher educators. We examine our own dialogical interactions of giving and receiving feedback using the moral elements of care ethics – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust, to provide a concrete example of how the ethics of care can be used productively for evaluating feedback practices.     

The development of student feedback literacy: enabling uptake of feedback

Student feedback literacy denotes the understandings, capacities and dispositions needed to make sense of information and use it to enhance work or learning strategies. In this conceptual paper, student responses to feedback are reviewed and a number of barriers to student uptake of feedback are discussed. Four inter-related features are proposed as a framework underpinning students’ feedback literacy: appreciating feedback; making judgments; managing affect; and taking action. Two well-established learning activities, peer feedback and analysing exemplars, are discussed to illustrate how this framework can be operationalized. Some ways in which these two enabling activities can be re-focused more explicitly towards developing students’ feedback literacy are elaborated. Teachers are identified as playing important facilitating roles in promoting student feedback literacy through curriculum design, guidance and coaching. The implications and conclusion summarise recommendations for teaching and set out an agenda for further research.     

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.     

Types and frequencies of feedback interventions in classroom interaction in secondary education

Contributing to the growing amount of literature on learning–enhancing feedback, this article attempts to distinguish between progress feedback and discrepancy feedback. Building on relevant literature drawn from psychology, we propose the use of a ratio of 3:1, positive:negative feedback. We analyzed contiguous 10 min blocks of classroom interactions from 78 teachers. Findings indicate that teachers seldom provide the types of feedback interventions identified as effective in enhancing learning in the course of typical classroom interactions. We examine potential explanations for this, discuss the consequences of this finding on teacher education and professional development, and offer several opportunities for future research.     

A surprising effect of feedback on learning

As meta-analyses demonstrate feedback effects on performance, our study examined possible mediators. Based on our cognitive–motivational model [Vollmeyer, R., & Rheinberg, F. (1998). Motivationale Einflüsse auf Erwerb und Anwendung von Wissen in einem computersimulierten System [Motivational influences on the acquisition and application of knowledge in a simulated system]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie, 12, 11–23] we examined how feedback changed (1) strategies, and (2) motivation during learning, and by doing so improved (3) final performance. Students (N = 211) learned how a dynamic system works and how to reach given goal states for the system. One group received feedback (i.e., knowledge of performance) the other one did not. We expected learners to improve after they received the first feedback. However, we found that learners expecting feedback used better strategies right from the start. Thus, they acquired more knowledge over fewer trials. Although we had also expected effects of feedback on motivation during learning, we could not support this hypothesis.     

Impact of feedback request forms and verbal feedback on higher education students’ feedback perception,self-efficacy,and motivation

ABSTRACT

In higher education, students often misunderstand teachers’ written feedback. This is worrisome, since written feedback is the main form of feedback in higher education. Organising feedback conversations, in which feedback request forms and verbal feedback are used, is a promising intervention to prevent misunderstanding of written feedback. In this study a 2 × 2 factorial experiment (N = 128) was conducted to examine the effects of a feedback request form (with vs. without) and feedback mode (written vs. verbal feedback). Results showed that verbal feedback had a significantly higher impact on students’ feedback perception than written feedback; it did not improve students’ self-efficacy, or motivation. Feedback request forms did not improve students’ perceptions, self-efficacy, or motivation. Based on these results, we can conclude that students have positive feedback perceptions when teachers communicate their feedback verbally and more research is needed to investigate the use of feedback request forms.     

The nature of feedback: how different types of peer feedback affect writing performance

Although providing feedback is commonly practiced in education, there is no general agreement regarding what type of feedback is most helpful and why it is helpful. This study examined the relationship between various types of feedback, potential internal mediators, and the likelihood of implementing feedback. Five main predictions were developed from the feedback literature in writing, specifically regarding feedback features (summarization, identifying problems, providing solutions, localization, explanations, scope, praise, and mitigating language) as they relate to potential causal mediators of problem or solution understanding and problem or solution agreement, leading to the final outcome of feedback implementation. To empirically test the proposed feedback model, 1,073 feedback segments from writing assessed by peers was analyzed. Feedback was collected using SWoRD, an online peer review system. Each segment was coded for each of the feedback features, implementation, agreement, and understanding. The correlations between the feedback features, levels of mediating variables, and implementation rates revealed several significant relationships. Understanding was the only significant mediator of implementation. Several feedback features were associated with understanding: including solutions, a summary of the performance, and the location of the problem were associated with increased understanding; and explanations of problems were associated with decreased understanding. Implications of these results are discussed.

Examining the nature and effects of feedback dialogue

Research has conventionally viewed feedback from the point of view of the input, thus analysing only one side of the feedback relationship. More recently, there has been an increased interest in understanding feedback-as-talk. Feedback dialogue has been conceptualised as the dynamic interplay of three dimensions: the cognitive, the social-affective and the structural. We sought to explore the interactional features of each dimension and their intermediary effects on students. We analysed students’ feedback dialogue excerpts as cases using interactional analysis. Analysis involved iterative inductive and deductive coding, and interpretation of feedback texts generated in an online course. The cognitive, social-affective and structural dimensions were interwoven within excerpts of feedback dialogue with effects on learners that extended beyond the immediate task (e.g. reframing of learners’ ideas, critical evaluation). The interactional features of each dimension include: cognitive (e.g. question asking, expressing oneself); social-affective (e.g. disclosure, expressing empathy); and structural (e.g. longitudinal opportunities for dialogue, invitational opportunities). The study provides evidence that strengthens the call for reconceptualising feedback as a dialogic and relational activity, as well as supporting the view that dialogic feedback can be a key strategy for sustainable assessment.     

A feedback model for data-rich learning experiences

Feedback has been identified as one of the factors with the largest potential for a positive impact in a learning experience. There is a significant body of knowledge studying feedback and providing guidelines for its implementation in learning environments. In parallel, the areas of learning analytics or educational data mining have emerged to explore how to analyse exhaustive digital trails produced by technology mediation to improve learning experiences. Current conceptualisations of feedback do not take into account the presence of these trails nor the presence of knowledge extracted through analytics techniques. This paper presents a model to reconceptualise feedback in data-rich learning experiences. It acknowledges the presence of algorithms to analyse and predict learner behaviour and proposes an integrated view between these elements as part of the feedback process and aspects conventionally present in previous models. This new conceptualisation offers instructors, designers and researchers a framework to formulate feedback processes in scenarios with comprehensive data capturing, while retaining a solid connection with well-established educational theories.     

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.     

The effect of feedback on academic achievement in technology-rich learning environments (TREs): A meta-analytic review

This study aimed to investigate the effect of feedback on students' academic achievement in a technology-rich environment through a systematic and quantitative synthesis of the studies conducted over several decades. We focused on three issues: (a) the effectiveness of feedback in enhancing learning performance; (b) possible factors (feedback characteristics and study features) associated with different studies that could have resulted in the inconsistent findings across the studies; and (c) how different types of feedback differed in their effect in enhancing academic achievement. Based on 182 effect sizes extracted from 61 studies, we found that, compared with no feedback condition, feedback had at least a medium effect (g = 0.44, 95%CI [0.324, 0.555]) in enhancing academic achievement, and the effect of explanation feedback was the strongest compared to other types of feedback. The study further revealed that the feedback in blended learning was more effective than that in online learning. Possible explanations and implications of these findings, as well as limitations and future research directions were discussed.     

Developing a learning-centred framework for feedback literacy

Abstract

There is an increasing focus on notions of feedback in which students are positioned as active players rather than recipients of information. These discussions have been either conceptual in character or have an empirical focus on designs to support learners in feedback processes. There has been little emphasis on learners’ perspectives on, and experiences of, the role they play in such processes and what they need in order to benefit from feedback. This study therefore seeks to identify the characteristics of feedback literacy – that is, how students understand and can utilise feedback for their own learning – by analysing students’ views of feedback processes drawing on a substantial data set derived from a study of feedback in two large universities. The analysis revealed seven groupings of learner feedback literacy, including understanding feedback purposes and roles, seeking information, making judgements about work quality, working with emotions, and processing and using information for the benefit of their future work (31 categories in total). By identifying these realised components of feedback literacy, in the form of illustrative examples, the emergent set of competencies can enable investigations of the development of feedback literacy and improve feedback designs in courses through alignment to these standards.     

From feedback to revisions: Effects of feedback features and perceptions

Although the effects of peer feedback have been studied from a number of perspectives, much remains to be learned about what leads students to act (or not) on their peers’ feedback in revisions. The present study examined the relationship between peer feedback features, student perceptions as potential mediators (understanding versus agreement with the feedback), and the likelihood of students’ implementation of the feedback. Peer feedback, back-evaluation comments, and revisions from 185 US high school students were analyzed. Investigated feedback features included four cognitive features (identification, explanation, solution, suggestion), and two affective features (mitigating praise, hedges). Logistic regression analyses revealed that: (1) both understanding and agreement with feedback predicted implementation; (2) presence of solutions predicted understanding of feedback; (3) mitigating praise predicted agreement of the problem; and (4) explanation and hedges predicted implementation separately from perception effects. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Enacting feedback utilization from a task-specific perspective

Feedback is central to successful teaching and learning. Despite extensive research on the relationship between feedback, pedagogy and learning, there remain no conclusive answers as to how feedback can be effectively utilized by learners. Recently, there is emerging research exploring how feedback is conceptualized as dialogic processes to facilitate provision and uptake of feedback; and how feedback utilization is best supported by learner active involvement in the iterative feedback process for future learning. Drawn from this knowledge base, this article aims to review four aspects of feedback scholarship including nature, paradigms, issues and trends which serve as a theoretical basis, together with instructors’ interviews, to inform how five common assessment tasks in one social sciences faculty could be strategically revamped to promote feedback utilization. The article concludes with pedagogical insights to suggest three conditions wherein feedback could be made sustainable to support learning through a redesigning of conventional assessment tasks in the higher education contexts.     

A systematic review of the role of learning analytics in enhancing feedback practices in higher education

Learning analytics (LA) offers new opportunities to enrich feedback practices in higher education, but little is understood about the ways different LA can enhance feedback practices for educators and students. This systematic literature review maps the current state of implementation of LA to improve feedback practices in technology-mediated learning environments in higher education. We used strict inclusion criteria to select relevant studies that have investigated the role of LA on feedback practices. To identify common features of LA for feedback studies, we coded relevant publications using an analytical framework that identifies four key dimensions of LA systems: what (types of data), how (analytic methods), why (objectives), and how educators and students are served by LA (stakeholders). Based on findings, we propose a conceptual framework that can guide the implementation of LA for feedback systems and also suggest future empirical research in this area.     

A journey towards sustainable feedback

Meeting students’ expectations associated with the provision of feedback is a perennial challenge for tertiary education. Efforts to provide comprehensive, timely feedback within our own first year undergraduate public health courses have not always met students’ expectations. In response, we sought to develop peer feedback activities to support the development of ‘self-evaluative strategies’ that would acknowledge the centrality of students in the feedback process. We describe these activities, their staged development and the qualitative and quantitative data gathered from students and the teaching teams to evaluate this. Our first steps towards embedding peer feedback with first year students indicated they are willing to engage in the process and appreciated the opportunity to provide and receive feedback, but the quality and extent of the peer feedback was largely superficial. Students’ reflections on the feedback received were also shallow. Supporting students to develop self-evaluative skills cannot be achieved in the short term, but must be embedded in courses and consistently reinforced, with greater emphasis placed on the development of a dialogue around feedback that connects students with peers and educators.     

Facilitating student learning in distance education: a case study on the development and implementation of a multifaceted feedback system

This paper reports on a case study conducted in an American university investigating the role of feedback within a distance education environment. Based on data gathered from online and hybrid undergraduate students in a teacher education program and supported by existing research, we describe how we support online learners by implementing a feedback system that incorporates multi-draft formative assessments and various feedback strategies. We describe these strategies (i.e. explicit feedback directions and feedback surveys) as well as data from formative assessments to demonstrate the impact of clear expectations and feedback on student performance in distance education. We present recommendations for online feedback and propose a feedback model for further study.