Understanding students' engagement with personalised feedback messages

Abstract

Feedback is a major factor of student success within higher education learning. However, recent changes -such as increased class sizes and socio-economic diversity of the student population -challenged the provision of effective student feedback. Although the use of educational technology for personalised feedback to diverse students has gained traction, the feedback gap still exists: educators wonder which students respond to feedback and which do not. In this study, a set of trackable Call to Action (CTA) links was embedded in two sets of feedback messages focusing on students' time management, with the goal of (1) examining the association between feedback engagement and course success and (2), to predict students' reaction to provided feedback. We also conducted two focus groups to further examine students' perception of provided feedback messages. Our results revealed that early engagement with the feedback was associated with higher chances of succeeding in the course. Likewise, previous engagement with feedback was highly predictive of students' engagement in the future, and also that certain student sub-populations, (e.g., female students), were more likely to engage than others. Such insight enables instructors to ask "why" questions, improve feedback processes and narrow the feedback gap. Practical implications of our findings are further discussed.

You’ve Got Mail: A Technology-Mediated Feedback Strategy to Support Self-Regulated Learning in First-Year University Students

“…Especially when it c omes to flipped classrooms, provision of clear guidelines and feedback on students' learning strategies is important so that they understand how to prepare for tutorials (Akçayır & Akçayır, 2018). However, providing effective feedback has become more difficult in recent years (Iraj et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2021;Pardo et al, 2019). Changes in higher education have led to educators seeking novel ways to provide timely, personalised feedback to students to promote their SRL (Pardo et al, 2019).…”

“…Despite this limitation, the findings identify technology -mediated feedback as a promising tool for supporting SRL. Previous research demonstrates LA based feedback is effective in improving students' engagement, satisfaction, and performance (Banihashem et al, 2022, Iraj et al, 2020Lewis et al, 2021;Pardo et al, 2019). LA based feedback may aid students by way of internal and external task factors (Winne & Hadwin, 1998), whereby students receive automated, yet personalised, feedback on their engagement or performance, to inform SRL strategy monitoring (i.e., via the evaluations process).…”

“…University students must develop effective strategies to complete pre-class activities in flipped classrooms, as these support engagement with in-class activities, and students' development of conceptual understanding (Matcha et al, 2019). University teaching staff are well positioned to support students' SRL development through targeted feedback (Kramarski, 2017;Winne & Hadwin, 1998), however, increasing student class sizes, diverse student populations and growth in blended and online learning have presented challenges to timely delivery of high -quality personalised feedback to large cohorts (Iraj et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2021;Pardo et al, 2019). Emerging hi gher education research presents learning analytics (LA) driven technology-mediated feedback as one potential strategy to enhance university students' SRL, particularly for larger cohorts (Chou & Zou, 2020;Lim et al, 2021;Matcha et al, 2019;Viberg et al, 2020).…”

Early Detecting Students at Risk Using Machine Learning Predictive Models

“…The Pearson correlation coefficient is used to measure the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The regression analysis is employed to determine the effectiveness of the model in predicting students' outcomes [14] Course success and feedback engagement…”

Narrowing the Feedback Gap: Examining Student Engagement with Personalized and Actionable Feedback Messages

“…Taking action requires a student capability termed proactive recipience of feedback . A lack of research examining how students interact with and are transformed by computer-assisted or produced feedback (Iraj, Fudge, Faulkner, Pardo, & Kovanović, 2020) limits the ability to build student capability and improve learning outcomes. Research on student feedback across institutions has shown that feedback that works for students encourages their active learning and, according to Molloy, Boud, and Henderson (2020), "called to action in some way" (p. 534).…”