Engaging students: student preferences for feedback

The provision of effective and high quality feedback has been identified as a key element of quality teaching, particularly for its role in engaging students. Rowe and Wood (2008b) developed a survey to explore student perceptions and preferences for feedback. The survey was distributed to a large cohort of undergraduate and postgraduate students at two Australian universities. The authors identified two feedback preference dimensions, which appeared to reflect two learning approaches, ‘surface’ and ‘deep’ as conceptualised by Biggs (2003) and others. Demographic variables were found to be poor predictors of student preferences for feedback. Surprisingly, one quarter of students surveyed said that they received none or rarely received any feedback. This suggests much improvement is needed in the provision of feedback; however, it may be that students sometimes fail to recognise feedback when they receive it. Results indicate that students want more engagement from teaching staff; specifically they want the provision of feedback to be made more personalised.