Professional Experience Placement

Price, Handley, Millar and O’Donovan (2010) undertook a three year study focused on student engagement with feedback. They were particularly interested in determining the effectiveness of feedback. The authors indicated the impetus for the study was created by constraints on resources and student dissatisfaction with assessment feedback. They also reported that that feedback is a crucial part of the assessment process.

The study revealed that there are difficulties in measuring the effectiveness of feedback related to the multiple purposes of feedback, and how it is interpreted. The authors argue that the assessment literacy of students is the key to the evaluation of feedback and feedback processes.

The authors found that for feedback to be effective there was a need for clarity about the purpose of the feedback. If the purpose of the feedback is unclear it is difficult to measure whether success has been achieved. Additionally timing and measurement of the effectiveness may not be straight forward.

The authors argue there are broadly five categories of feedback that are not clearly defined. They include correction, reinforcement, forensic diagnosis, benchmarking and development or feed-forward. The authors discuss the difficulties with provision of feedback as it is dependent on a number of factors including beliefs about the learning and teaching process and may not result in more learning. A content focus may lead to an expert providing more knowledge, whereas a facilitation focus is more likely to be concerned with the development of meta-cognitive skills and the learning process. This nexus becomes more blurred depending on the students capacity to interpret the information; and whether they choose to act on it. Moreover, other factors such as motivation, previous experiences, timing or trust may also have an impact on the measurement of the effectiveness of the feedback.

The authors discuss the study and provide evidence using student and staff views regarding effectiveness of feedback to substantiate their claims. It became apparent to the researchers that effective feedback had utility and was “something that helps you do better… Giving you a push in the right direction”. The conclusions of the paper indicated that there needs to be a dialogue between staff and students to develop a shared understanding of the purpose, role and practice of feedback.

The findings of this study have implications for clinical supervisors. It is important they determine the category of feedback they will be providing to students as the information delivery, content and timing may be different depending on the intended purpose. Importantly, it is necessary to understand the student expectation of feedback including the timing as they may not be engaged in the content or process if they do not recognise the dialogue as feedback.

If you have any tips or ideas about providing feedback to students or any comments you are welcome to post them here.