Yvonne Jacobs
8 August 2024
In the NSS 2024 the question ‘How often does feedback help you to improve your work?’ received an average of 73% satisfaction score from all participants. This was the second lowest satisfaction rating out of all the responses to the questions in the survey and is consistent with previous NSS results. Students were not unhappy with all aspects of feedback. More students were satisfied that the marking was fair (81%), the assessments had allowed them to demonstrate what they had learnt (81%) and that feedback had been received in time (80%). Why is feedback not being perceived as helpful by students and how can we improve student satisfaction with this aspect of teaching practice?
There has been no shortage of studies on assessment feedback including empirical studies examining feedback from students’ perspectives. The answer to the question of what makes feedback good has been described as a conundrum[i]with studies finding little agreement among students or markers as to what constitutes helpful feedback or why[ii]. How can we make our feedback more helpful and increase student satisfaction with it if there is no agreement on what makes feedback helpful? One of the few things that studies have found agreement on is that for feedback to be helpful students need to engage with it. Some studies have emphasized student’s lack of engagement as a major barrier to improvement in their performance[iii] while others argue that that this has been overstated[iv]. Students taking part in recent focus groups at Royal Holloway reported that their engagement with feedback varies according to how helpful they perceive it to be. Where they perceive the feedback to be of no value to them, for example if it was too generic or vague, they do not read it in full or engage with it. In contrast, where they perceive their feedback to be helpful in offering guidance on how to improve in future assessments they engage with it and act on it. There was little agreement, however, on what feedback was helpful so we return to the conundrum of how to promote engagement through helpful feedback if we do not know what helpful feedback is.
In addition to feedback being helpful there is increasingly attention being paid to the need for feedback to be kind. Studies have shown the negative emotional impact that feedback can have on students’ engagement, motivation, and wellbeing[v] and the positive effect that kind feedback can have in contributing to the wellbeing of both students and tutors[vi]. As with the question of what makes feedback good there is no clear consensus on what makes feedback kind. Students taking part in the focus groups at Royal Holloway showed a wide range of emotional responses or ‘academic buoyancy’[vii] to feedback. These ranged from those who stated that they did not care about the tone of feedback to students who described the emotional impact that unkind feedback had on them which prevented them from engaging with it or even reading it in full.
Some studies point to the need to provide guidance to students on how to use their feedback effectively. While this can help it assumes that the feedback has the potential to be effective. Fewer studies address the need to train markers in giving feedback. It has been claimed that tutors practice of providing feedback is based on their personal experience of receiving feedback[viii]. While peer observation is often used to assess our teaching, how often is our feedback assessed and commented on by our peers? Attention is currently being given to changing assessments to be more authentic but are we giving sufficient attention to adapting our feedback in response to these changes?
Even if studies cannot provide clear answers as to what feedback is helpful and kind, there is still value in continuing to explore this from students’ perspectives. While there was little agreement among the students taking part in the Royal Holloway focus groups, the experience was invaluable in making me self-reflect on the style and content of my own feedback. Dissemination of students’ perspectives can raise greater awareness of markers of the potential for both the improvement of a student’s performance that feedback can lead to but also the negative effects that unkind feedback can create. In addition to raising general awareness, self-reflection, peer review and other training of markers has the potential to improve the helpfulness and kindness of feedback. If, as has been claimed, high quality feedback is the most powerful single influence on student achievement[ix] then we owe it to our students to strive to make our feedback more helpful and to increase their satisfaction of it. In times of increasing workload this may not be welcomed by markers but providing effective feedback need not add to the marking workload. As one student in the Royal Holloway focus group explained, ‘It is not a question of more of less….it is the quality…the length and the detail do not matter.’
[i] O'Donovan, B. M., den Outer, B., Price, M., & Lloyd, A. (2021). What makes good feedback good? Studies in Higher Education (Dorchester-on-Thames), 46(2), 318-329.
[ii] Li, J., & De Luca, R. (2014). Review of assessment feedback. Studies in Higher Education (Dorchester-on-Thames), 39(2), 378-393; Haughney, K., Wakeman, S., & Hart, L. (2020). Quality of feedback in higher education: A review of literature. Education Sciences, 10(3), 60.
[iii] Winstone, N., Bourne, J., Medland, E., Niculescu, I., & Rees, R. (2021). "Check the grade, log out": students' engagement with feedback in learning management systems. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 46(4), 631-643.
[iv] Doan, L. (2013). Is Feedback a Waste of Time? The Students’ Perspective. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 1(2)10.
[v] Poulos, A., & Mahony, M. J. (2008). Effectiveness of feedback: the students' perspective. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(2), 143-154.
[vi] Turnbull, A. (2022). Feeling feedback: screencasting assessment feedback for tutor and student well-being. Law Teacher, 56(1), 105-118.
[vii] Ahmed Shafi, A., Hatley, J., Middleton, T., Millican, R., & Templeton, S. (2018a). The role of assessment feedback in developing academic buoyancy. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(3), 415-427.
[viii] Li, J., & Barnard, R. (2011). Academic tutors’ beliefs about and practices of giving feedback on students’ written assignments: A New Zealand case study. Assessing Writing, 16(2), 137-148.
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