Designing feedback activities to help low-performing students

Abstract

Many students struggle with making sense of feedback information and in applying and transferring it to new contexts. Research literature suggests that low-performing students are especially at risk because they often do not understand assessment criteria and cannot utilise information they receive. This paper addresses this problem through investigating assessment processes which aim to support the influence of feedback on student improvement. It focusses on an empirical study of an undergraduate course at university level in which students resubmit assignments after having applied feedback information received on initial drafts. Such designs help educators to strengthen student improvement from feedback processes by engaging students directly with feedback comments and assessment criteria. Data from the designs enable comparison of improvements between low-performing versus high-performing students and shows that while all students improved, the gap between low-performers and their peers narrowed.