How formative feedback enhances the student learning experience

Faculty invest considerable effort to provide students with formative feedback. Educational research has endorsed the value of a clearly articulated approach when providing student feedback known as ‘assessment for learning’. In order to ascertain whether claims associated with ‘assessment for learning’ hold true in the engineering disciplines, a three-year study of the deployment of such approaches was undertaken. Preliminary research identified differences in perceptions between staff and students. They showed different understandings of what constitutes feedback, and different expectations of how feedback might be use