Assessment: "If students want feedback why don't they collect their assignments?"

Both teachers and learners agree that learners benefit from good quality feedback. While teachers spend many hours giving feedback on assessed work, students often fail to collect and read the feedback, and then complain about lack of feedback. In a multidisciplinary study carried out at RMIT, highly rated lecturers were asked what kind of feedback they give. It was found that these lecturers give a surprisingly diverse range of written and verbal feedback. Some common characteristics were that their feedback was mainly formative, and of high qual ity, sufficient quantity and timeliness. The feedback emphasised what was well done and what could be improved rather than what was wrong. Equity was not seen as an issue, in contrast to an earlier study showing this is what students value most. Further work is needed to see if adopting similar feedback methods would improve the students' rating of other less highly rated lecturers.