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Students tell us what good written feedback looks like
Feedback can be an important element of learning, but only if students engage with it. Students are only likely to engage with feedback that they find useful. This study aimed to identify characteristics of written feedback perceived by students as effective. We used a mixed‐method approach, integra...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7193163/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32176832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2211-5463.12841 |
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author | Voelkel, Susanne Varga‐Atkins, Tunde Mello, Luciane V. |
author_facet | Voelkel, Susanne Varga‐Atkins, Tunde Mello, Luciane V. |
author_sort | Voelkel, Susanne |
collection | PubMed |
description | Feedback can be an important element of learning, but only if students engage with it. Students are only likely to engage with feedback that they find useful. This study aimed to identify characteristics of written feedback perceived by students as effective. We used a mixed‐method approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative data that were collected through the analysis of feedback that was identified by students as good, a student questionnaire, as well as interviews and a focus group exploring students’ views on what good feedback looks like. Although the results show that length and composition of ‘good’ feedback can be extremely variable, some common characteristics could be identified, leading to a set of recommendations for staff marking written assessments. According to students, good feedback should be detailed and specific, and it should tell students how they can improve. Students also find it important that feedback is honest and constructive. In addition, positive reinforcement was identified as important by the focus group, although few examples of good written feedback on the assignment contained any direct praise. Surprisingly, feedforward which might help students in other modules did not feature highly in students’ perceptions of good feedback, possibly indicating a focus by students on improving the current assignment rather than on future assignments. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7193163 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-71931632020-05-01 Students tell us what good written feedback looks like Voelkel, Susanne Varga‐Atkins, Tunde Mello, Luciane V. FEBS Open Bio Education Article Feedback can be an important element of learning, but only if students engage with it. Students are only likely to engage with feedback that they find useful. This study aimed to identify characteristics of written feedback perceived by students as effective. We used a mixed‐method approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative data that were collected through the analysis of feedback that was identified by students as good, a student questionnaire, as well as interviews and a focus group exploring students’ views on what good feedback looks like. Although the results show that length and composition of ‘good’ feedback can be extremely variable, some common characteristics could be identified, leading to a set of recommendations for staff marking written assessments. According to students, good feedback should be detailed and specific, and it should tell students how they can improve. Students also find it important that feedback is honest and constructive. In addition, positive reinforcement was identified as important by the focus group, although few examples of good written feedback on the assignment contained any direct praise. Surprisingly, feedforward which might help students in other modules did not feature highly in students’ perceptions of good feedback, possibly indicating a focus by students on improving the current assignment rather than on future assignments. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-03-30 /pmc/articles/PMC7193163/ /pubmed/32176832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2211-5463.12841 Text en The Authors. Published by FEBS Press and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Education Article Voelkel, Susanne Varga‐Atkins, Tunde Mello, Luciane V. Students tell us what good written feedback looks like |
title | Students tell us what good written feedback looks like |
title_full | Students tell us what good written feedback looks like |
title_fullStr | Students tell us what good written feedback looks like |
title_full_unstemmed | Students tell us what good written feedback looks like |
title_short | Students tell us what good written feedback looks like |
title_sort | students tell us what good written feedback looks like |
topic | Education Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7193163/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32176832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2211-5463.12841 |
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