ABSTRACT
This chapter explores differences in higher education students’ experiences of tutor feedback on assignments. In the UK, feedback on student work is effectively mandated through quality assurance systems such as the national Quality Assurance Agency’s Code of Practice on assessment (https://www" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://www. qaa.ac.uk/public/cop/codesofpractice.htm). It features in the new National Student Survey (https://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2006/nss.htm" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2006/nss.htm), which is used to evaluate the quality of education provided by universities. Nevertheless, the provision of feedback on students’ academic work is also regarded as raising dilemmas in relation to feasibility and effectiveness. Feasibility is brought into question by the pressure on academic staff time and the difficulties of providing individual feedback to students who are taught in large groups (Knight & Yorke, 2003, p.43). Modular curriculum structures are also said to give rise to problems of getting feedback to students in a timely manner (Weaver, 2006). Questions of effectiveness frequently centre on debates about whether students actually use feedback (Higgins et al., 2002), whether they understand it (Chanock, 2000; Higgins et al., 2001; Weaver, 2006), and whether the feedback is appropriately constructed (Ivanic et al., 2000). The positioning of feedback systems as part of auditable procedures is considered to damage the dialogic functions of feedback (Crook et al., 2006).
