Students’ perception on the effectiveness of summative, feedforward and dialogic approach to feedback

In this paper, I describe how feedback approaches (i.e. summative, feedforward and dialogic feedback) are incorporated into individual-based and group-based assessment tasks in a Hong Kong sub-degree academic writing course. The effectiveness of these approaches is evaluated through a post-study survey questionnaire on students’ perception after the course is completed. A total of 118 out of 155 students responded to the survey. Findings were: (1) most participants chose individual-based learning (i.e. summative or feedforward feedback) as their preferred learning method, rather than group-based learning (dialogic feedback); (2) feedback approaches on the individual-based assessment tasks was perceived the most positively among different assessment tasks; (3) perception of the end-of-term test has the strongest association with the perception of the overall course assessment. Findings are discussed and recommendations are made, followed by the conclusion and limitations of this study.