Conditions that enable effective feedback

Abstract

Despite an increasing focus on assessment feedback, educators continue to find that simply replicating an effective feedback practice from one context does not guarantee success in the next. There is a growing recognition that the contextual factors surrounding successful practices need to be considered. This article reports on a large-scale mixed methods project and proposes 12 conditions that enable successful feedback in higher education. The conditions were distilled from seven rich case studies through multiple stages of thematic analysis, case comparison and reliability checking. The conditions were also evaluated by surveying senior leaders of Australian universities. These conditions highlight the importance of carefully designing feedback processes, along with the need for addressing capacity and culture for feedback. This helps to explain why there are such variances in effective feedback across contexts, and offers insight into how it may be achieved.

Peer feedback as a strategy to foster feedback literacy in first-year allied health students

“…The development of feedback literacy can be strongly influenced by the educator (Sutton, 2012;Xu and Carless, 2017;Henderson et al, 2019;Carless and Winstone, 2020). Therefore, it is not enough for the educator to only present the feedback activities, they must play an active role in fostering an environment where student feedback literacy can develop (Sutton, 2012;Johnson et al, 2016;Carless and Boud, 2018).…”

“…Increasing numbers of students undertaking tertiary education-with subsequent changes in educational design, delivery and teaching load for educators-has challenged educators to provide constructive, meaningful feedback to their students. Consequently, research is exploring strategies to foster student agency in the feedback process, improve feedback literacy and evaluate the role of students as partners in the feedback process (Carless and Boud, 2018;Dawson et al, 2019;Henderson et al, 2019;Molloy, Boud and Henderson, 2019). Feedback is contextual, but in a broader sense, according to Ramaprasad (1983) is "…information about a gap between the actual level and the reference of a system parameter, which is used to alter the gap in some way" (p. 4).…”

“…Feedback is central to the learning process and can foster improved decision making, ultimately improving a student's ability to achieve their learning outcomes (Higgins, Hartley and Skelton, 2002;Orsmond and Merry, 2013;Scott, 2014;Henderson et al, 2019). It is argued that the traditional construct of feedback in the educational context is too teacher-centred and needs more student input to be truly reflective of how all educational stakeholders perceive feedback (Scott, 2014).…”

Interaction Of Digital Economy And Higher Education At The Modern Stage

“…In principle, modern higher education differs from the previous model -it has ceased to be a "privilege" of youth and has become continuous in the process of all life. Due to subject orientation of education, students, graduate students and specialists understand that the engine of economic growth is information that helps gain knowledge and apply it in technology (Skinner, 2019;Henderson et al, 2019).…”

Improving The System Of It-Specialists Training In The Digital Economy Conditions

“…In the structure of any personality, according to the great Russian physiologist I. Pavlov, there are potential of research abilities. Therefore, the main goal of improving the system of training an IT specialist in the context of digitalization is to develop pedagogical methods for their development, and to bring them to a new, higher level (Henderson et al, 2019).…”