What Kind of E-assessment Feedback Is Important to Students? An Empirical Study

Abstract

E-assessment needs to provide detailed feedback that students would use. To this end, the content of feedback should include assessment information that is important to students. By using a convenient sample of twenty second-year undergraduate students, this study explored the extent to which different kinds of assessment feedback were important to students. Therefore, an online questionnaire was administered which, apart from asking values of some background variables including academic achievement, listed a number of different feedback techniques supporting activities applied in deep and strategic approaches to learning and studying. For each technique, students had to indicate the extent of the importance they assigned to it. It was found that: (1) although feedback techniques supporting a deep approach were as important to students as those supporting a strategic approach, the importance of the former was positively related to that of the latter; (2) feedback techniques supporting a deep approach were more important to females than males; (3) when the importance of all these feedback techniques together was considered in a specific way, their relevance to an increase in students’ knowledge, skills and motivation could be demonstrated. Although this study used a small sample that might characterise it as preliminary research, it revealed valuable findings, which due to their considerable effect size, make the sample size less questionable. Suggestions for further research are included.