Students’ Perceptions of and Preferences for assessment feedback in higher education: Implication for evaluators

Abstract

The ability to communicate to students the extent of their strengths and weaknesses following assessment is a crucial element for high-quality teaching and learning. In this context it is referred to an assessment feedback. Feedbacks from assessments serve primarily as a means of favourably imparting developmental knowledge, i.e., assessing students' future work in order to facilitate learning. There has been a recent movement towards conceptualising assessment feedback as a relational and dialogic process; consequently, it is imperative to ascertain students' preferences and perceptions. The dedication of evaluators is vital to support learning advancement and guarantee the value of assessment comments. In order to ascertain students' opinions about and preferences for assessment feedback, this study presented the findings of a descriptive and inferential survey. The "Students' Perceptions of and Preferences for Assessment Feedback Scale" (SPPAFS), a 49-item structured questionnaire was utilised to gather responses from 300 undergraduate students who were sampled from three federal universities in the Southeast geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The study was directed by four research questions, and two hypotheses were examined at the significance level of p<.05. The findings supported the claim that students did not regularly receive assessment feedback by revealing that despite receiving high-quality feedback from assessments, lecturers at the institutions were not as eager or proactive in offering it to their students. It was established that since students perceive assessment feedback as crucial for their personal growth and learning, they hold positive and favourable views of it. Additionally, the students favour more conversational, individualized, and online device-based modes of evaluation feedback. It was suggested that in order to give assessment feedback in real time, evaluators and teachers should take advantage of technological advancements. This would enable even more customised assessment feedback that is geared towards the needs and learning preferences of each student.