An investigation into what feedback students recognise as feedback

The paper reports on a study conducted with final year undergraduates on a product design course, in the UK, to attempt to better understand how they both interpret and respond to feedback on their academic work. The starting point for this study was the relatively poor scores attained for the elements of assessment and feedback in the National Student Survey (NSS) results for this course. The paper draws upon an existing body of literature around assessment and feedback related to the NSS results nationally. Based upon the literature an intervention relating to an element of assessment was made with these students and data collected on the students’ response to this intervention. The results of analyzing this data suggest that while students’ responded positively to some aspects of the intervention it is apparent that students’ still struggle to understand how to deploy the feedback to improve their work. This study is part of a longitudinal study, the next part of which involves a second intervention with the same student cohort that will attempt to ascertain what they would like to receive in terms of feedback