Impact of feedback request forms and verbal feedback on higher education students’ feedback perception, self-efficacy, and motivation

Abstract

In higher education, students often misunderstand teachers’ written feedback. This is worrisome, since written feedback is the main form of feedback in higher education. Organising feedback conversations, in which feedback request forms and verbal feedback are used, is a promising intervention to prevent misunderstanding of written feedback. In this study a 2 × 2 factorial experiment (N = 128) was conducted to examine the effects of a feedback request form (with vs. without) and feedback mode (written vs. verbal feedback). Results showed that verbal feedback had a significantly higher impact on students’ feedback perception than written feedback; it did not improve students’ self-efficacy, or motivation. Feedback request forms did not improve students’ perceptions, self-efficacy, or motivation. Based on these results, we can conclude that students have positive feedback perceptions when teachers communicate their feedback verbally and more research is needed to investigate the use of feedback request forms.