Formative Feedback as a Global Facilitator: Impact on Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation and Positive Affect

Abstract

This chapter seeks to examine how formative feedback shapes students’ motivation and positive emotions in the higher education setting. We propose that formative feedback has a central role to play in fostering students’ motivation toward their learning, in that it does not only directly impact their motivation toward the courses where formative feedback practices are present, but also foster their overall motivational tendencies, through the promotion of positive emotions. Looking at a formative feedback project in a HK higher education institution, the current chapter reports a quasi-experiment to investigate the impacts of theoretically derived formative feedback practices on students’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and their positive emotions experienced during the courses in which the practices were put forth. The research’s findings suggested that formative feedback leads to increases in intrinsic motivation to attend the courses and students’ overall positive emotions. It also exerts a ‘protecting’ effect on their extrinsic motivation to attend the courses. Implications of these results are discussed. The impact of this study, especially on its contribution to scholarship of learning and teaching (SoLT), is discussed.