Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Mekala Soosay
elements under study, demanded by the nature of the research questions. More complex questions
were posed to participants and clarified by the interviewer, which otherwise may have been neglected
by single methods, leading to greater depth, vividness and clarity of meaning that enhanced the
quality of data.
4. Research findings and discussion
4.1 Student responses
The questions were framed either in simple Yes/No format or used the Likert scale where 1=strongly
disagree, 5=strongly agree on a scale of 1-5. Question 1 was aimed at students only, whereas the
rest of the 5 questions were directed to both tutors and students.
Table 1: Question 1
Please rate the following sentences on how strongly you agree or disagree with them. (1-5)
Answer Options Percentage Agreeing or Strongly
Agreeing
I believe that tutor/peer feedback is an essential part of my
learning. 95%
I read the feedback received from my tutor(s). 95%
I understand the language used in the feedback. 81%
The feedback I received was in time to apply to related
assessment. 75%
My tutor(s) prepared me in using the feedback effectively. 66%
The feedback clarified things I did not understand. 66%
The feedback helped me improve my assessment (formative
feedback). 74%
Overall, the feedback helped improve my ways of learning. 69%
Students agreed with most of the statements; however 25% of them remained neutral to the
statement ‘My tutor(s) prepared me in using the feedback effectively’, and 20% of students to the
statement ‘The feedback clarified things I did not understand’. These suggest that though a majority of
students understand the language used in the feedback and that their tutor(s) prepared them in using
the feedback effectively, they might find feedback received difficult to apply to task improvement and
progression. 23% of students were indifferent to the statement ‘Overall, the feedback helped improve
my ways of learning’, adding that they were not aware that discussions around assessment tasks
during practical sessions constituted feedback too, implying that they need to extend their ability in
recognising what feedback actually means.
There is some evidence to suggest that students could not see the feed-forward nature of feedback
as a number of them have indicated that they would prefer clearer guidance on how summative
feedback can influence subsequent modules studied. This also implies that generic feedback requires
clarification by tutors, but perhaps only to students who would demand for detailed feedback.
5. Combined tutor and student responses
The following 5 questions were directed at both tutors and students, and the findings were structured
to facilitate comparison between both sets of responses.
The responses to Question 2 (Table 2) mostly reflect consistency between the types of feedback
offered by tutors and what students generally agree as useful feedback in terms of ‘location of where
the problem lies’, ‘summarisation of issues’, and ‘problem explicitly identified’. On the other hand,
although students find feedback in terms of ‘solution explicitly offered or identified’ and ‘solution
sufficiently explained’ useful, tutors do not tend to favour them highly. They wish to see students
actively acting upon the feedback and coming up with diverse solutions, as there is no one right
answer. One tutor aptly put it, ‘the problem explained can be misconstrued’, suggesting that a bidirectional
or dialogical process is necessary for clarification of feedback to occur (Nicol 2010).
In general, students appreciated annotated work returned to them, as there is a clear indication of
where and how they were incorrect in their assessed tasks. As one student put it, ‘I prefer finding the
solutions from the feedback received because it feels good when I can finally figure it out’. This
indicates that when students feel a sense of achievement, it would boost their confidence in selfassessing
their own work. It is worth noting that the relatively low use by tutors of offering, identifying
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