Jensen, L. X., Bearman, M., & Boud, D. (2023). Characteristics of productive feedback encounters in online learning. Teaching in Higher Education, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2023.2213168
Jensen et al. (2023) provide a digital ethnographic approach to studying the perceived usefulness of feedback for students taking online classes at an Australian and Danish university in courses that were not emergency remote courses due to COVID-19. Jensen et al. situate their argument in the context of productive feedback – feedback a student finds meaningful – and feedback in higher education, noting feedback can come from interactions from humans, technology, or resources. The dataset for this study was derived from 18 students whose online text-based work was observed and 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted using longitudinal audio diaries. The data was thematically coded. Three major themes for feedback emerged. The first was elicited feedback encounters, where students directly asked for feedback. An example of this would be asking for peer review or emailing a question. The second was formal feedback encounters, where feedback is structured as part of the course design. An example is any instructor feedback on a submitted assignment. The final is incidental feedback encounters, where students get information that causes them to reflect on their understanding. An example is a discussion with peers about the directions for an assignment. Feedback has two types of impact: instrumental or substantive. Instrumental feedback is feedback that clearly delineates for the student what action they need to take next. This type of feedback often leads to superficial changes based on direct instruction for what to do. Substantive feedback is feedback that asks a student to critically reflect on their own assumptions. This type of feedback is often ignored because it’s too challenging; however, if the student engages with this feedback it reshapes their understanding of the task, the work, or their own approach. Instrumental and substantive feedback are equally valuable to student learning and serve a purpose. However, all feedback is most valuable to students when it is received when the are open to the feedback and the feedback arrives in time for them to apply it to their current work.
Jensen et al. do a good job of situating their problem in the context of feedback. There was discussion about the framework and approach for feedback, but it was not related back to the discussion or the findings in a clear way. It was also not clear if the authors of the study collected the dataset on their own or used a dataset that was collected for someone else and available for other researchers to utilize to conduct research. It was, however, very easy to follow the conceptual framework to the research questions and methodology used to explore this problem.
Feedback is something I have grappled with for a very long time as an educator. When I teach writing classes, I am always swamped by feedback. When I teach online courses, I log in every single day to read what students post and provide them formative feedback that I hope will shape their work. I’m not always sure that students read and engage with the feedback I give them, except when I require it as part of a reflection assignment (as Jensen et al. pointed out in their literature review). But I do agree that students will happily take surface feature/lower-order concern feedback and apply it easily because it is direct and tells them what to do. For example, if I tell them to restate their thesis and give them a template, they almost always do it. But if I ask them to reframe their thinking on a topic – which would lead to major overhaul of their paper – they often don’t do anything with that feedback. Jensen et al. pointed out that this type of feedback is hard to do. I mean, it’s a big ask to ask a first-year composition student to reframe their entire way of thinking about a topic while at the same time they’re learning how to research, evaluate sources, and all the things that come with learning to do academic research. It defeats the purpose of giving that kind of feedback, however, for me to tell them how to think about the topic differently. But this kind of feedback is successful if they’re ready and open to the conversation of changing how they think.
In online learning, it’s even harder to give this kind of feedback that leads to substantive learning because you can’t see the student to know how well it’s received or even understood. I also don’t always know the right time to give that feedback so it’s useful. In 8 week classes, I’m usually one week behind in grading so they’re getting feedback as they’re working two assignments down from the initial feedback. It’s not really helpful anymore. I need to think about ways to structure feedback so they get it when it’s useful.
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