The effect of written approval on Italian students’ academic performance in higher education

Approval as well as attention is a generalised conditioned reinforcer (Skinner, 1957), and increasing teacher approval has been shown to produce both increased pupil ‘on-task’ behaviour (e.g. Harrop & Swinson, 2000) and academic achievement (e.g. Weinstein, Laverghetta, Alexander & Stewart, 2009). Since written feedback is, in most cases, the only way university tutors can give individualised attention to their students, the study was designed to investigate the effect of increased written approval on students’ academic performance in higher education. Participants were one hundred and thirty five undergraduate psychology students from a northern Italian university. Condition 1 students received normal feedback, which tended to highlight weakness as well as occasionally noting strengths; condition 2 students received additional individualized positive comments. The dependent variable for this study was the number of correct answers in multiple-choice tests and during final assessment. Additionally we asked the students to complete a module feedback form as a measure of social validity. Mean scores under the two conditions were similar throughout the course and during the final assessment, although students receiving normal feedback scored marginally higher on the final assessment than those receiving additional personal comments. Interestingly, on the module feedback form students’ scores showed that those who received additional individualized positive comments were more positive towards the course than those who received the normal feedback. Among possible explanations for the increased positive feedback group not scoring higher than the normal feedback group might be a possible 'complacency effect': the extra positive feedback might have made those students feel that they had reached a sufficient level of achievement and that there was little need for any extra work prior to testing. Whilst the results demonstrate that the increased written approval given to students has not given rise to increased academic performance, it must be stressed that the study was conducted only with northern Italian students. The extent to which these results can be generalized will depend on further investigation following on from this first step, undertaken in different contexts