Motivation
Feedback-oriented training is a key pillar in Radboud University's new educational vision and the new curriculum of the Radboud Teachers' Academy (RTA). Despite efforts to use feedback effectively for student development, this appears to be difficult in practice. The value of the feedback given for their own development sometimes remains unclear to students. Students also indicate that the current use of feedback contributes to a high workload. To make feedback more valuable, we want to understand how students experience, value and use feedback.
Hypothesis
Feedback literacy encompasses the skills, beliefs, and activities that contribute to effectively using feedback for personal development. Both students and teachers play an important role in this. With her innovation voucher, Lieke wants to make this feedback literacy visible, gain insight into the challenges students experience and the way in which they use feedback for their development.
Desired solution
This research focuses on mapping students' experiences with feedback. It will provide insight into the challenges and difficulties students face in receiving and using feedback. With this research, Lieke wants to better understand how students within the educational minor/module can be supported in a more targeted way in the development of their feedback literacy.
Plan of action
To conduct the study, a questionnaire will first be administered to students to identify characteristics of effective feedback. The results of this questionnaire will serve as the basis for the focus group interviews. In two focus group interviews, students are asked about their experiences with feedback within the programme and how they use it for their development. In addition, audio recordings are made during lectures to get a more complete picture of the feedback processes and how students deal with them.
Results
The project has provided valuable insights into how students experience the feedback process within the programme, which elements promote or hinder a development-oriented approach, and what they understand by “good” feedback. Development-oriented means that students use feedback to take control of their own learning, both in determining what they want to develop and how they shape that development. Supporting elements in this are a positive relationship with supervisors and fellow students and the structural organisation and discussion of feedback during lectures within the programme, at multiple moments and in multiple subjects.
Obstacles include the amount of feedback and the lack of time and space to really work with the feedback. When feedback is not an integrated part of further education, it loses its urgency compared to other tasks. In addition, it appears that the interpretation and value that students attach to the feedback they receive do not always correspond to the intention of the giver. Feedback is sometimes perceived as product-oriented, whereas it was actually focused on the thinking and working methods of the learning process.
What students understand by good feedback varies greatly. Some appreciate reflective feedback that encourages reflection, while others prefer concrete feedback that can be applied immediately. Feedback is considered particularly valuable when it is clear how it contributes to their own learning. Students mention that it is helpful if they are given the opportunity to discuss the feedback with each other and with their supervisor(s). The teaching method used also contributes to this. Students learn from each other's experiences, recognise shared challenges and develop strategies to use feedback more actively. This shows that the value of feedback does not lie in the comments themselves, but arises in the process of dialogue, reflection and application.
