Using Staff-Student Reviews of Past Feedback to Increase the Impact of that Feedback on Current Assignments

When used effectively, feedback can make a large and easily identifiable impact on learning, and yet there is often a widespread failure among psychology students to collect feedback on their assignments. This paper reports on a new approach to handling feedback, where feedback from second-year research projects was carried over to the following year and integrated into the teaching of the third-year dissertation project. The aim of this programme was for students to gain the maximum benefit from the feedback while at the same time restoring staff confidence in the feedback process. A questionnaire measured 74 undergraduate students' evaluations of the programme. The relationship between grades and feedback was also explored. The findings show that participation in a detailed review of feedback with the dissertation supervisor greatly increased the perceived impact of that feedback. However, the grade achieved on the assignment that generated the feedback had no significant effect on a student's level of engagement with their feedback. This paper also discusses some of the practical lessons learnt from this programme, such as addressing staff concerns regarding the impact of the programme on their workload.