Students' and teachers' experience of assessment feedback: a case study

John Milton and Georgina Caillard
RMIT University

Keywords: assessment; feedback; formative

The research on feedback on assessment tasks over the past twenty years has primarily related to the learning of writing, languages and ESL as well as learning through distance education. Australian research in this area has been limited. Over the past decade research has been undertaken in a wider set of disciplines but much of the work still focuses on written feedback and has been conducted in the United Kingdom. Our investigation of assessment feedback sought the views of the students on the strengths and weaknesses of the feedback they received in a single subject in management. A range of issues were uncovered on the basis of two questionnaires and focus group discussions with students. The assessors were also interviewed before, during and after they marked student work to reveal their expectations and experiences of providing feedback. In this manner the research aimed to present an overview of the experiences of feedback in a typical undergraduate course in Australia.

The research highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the assessor's comments on the student work and on separate feedback sheets as well as the general oral feedback to all students. The research literature on written feedback misses the importance of oral feedback in tutorial sessions. Moreover, our findings suggest that feedback needs to be seen holistically, incorporating the briefing of, and interaction with, students before submission as much as feedback after marking. In addition, the research points to the importance of good two way communication between students and teachers. A challenge for all teachers is to continue to find ways of helping diverse students gain the confidence to raise issues of feedback before they become barriers to learning.