Monologue or Dialogue? Oral Feedback Experiences of Students and Supervisors During Undergraduate Research

Abstract

Effective feedback provides information to both students and educators about the goals they need to achieve, students’ current performance and understanding in relation to the goals, and the next activities or goals to be achieved to make better progress. Despite its significance as a catalyst to enhance learning, feedback may not always fulfill its true potential. Specifically, feedback as telling where the educator takes a central role in the feedback process has been identified as problematic and insufficient to promote students’ self-regulation. Following a qualitative case study design, this paper explores oral feedback experiences of undergraduate students and their supervisors during students’ undergraduate research projects. Data were collected using audio-recorded attended observations of supervision meetings of four student-supervisor dyads. Findings from the present study revealed that students and supervisors had a limited view of feedback and therefore unable to harness the potential of feedback for students’ self-regulation. The uniqueness of this study lies in its representations of authentic student-supervisor verbal exchanges. It also demonstrates that although there are always opportunities for students and educators to engage in verbal interactions, these do not necessarily lead to dialogic exchanges between the two parties.