platforming student voices
a correlational study exploring the link between student perceptions of instructor feedback responsiveness and their own learning outcomes.
project prompt: develop an analysis report based on two variables of choice in a big educational data set.
tools: SPSS, google suite.
research question: “what is the relationship between student perception of their instructor’s openness to feedback and students’ perception of their learning outcomes?”
methods: literature review, statistical analysis, big data analysis.
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outcome: a correlational study exploring the link between student perceptions of instructor feedback responsiveness and their own learning outcomes.
for this project, each student was tasked with cleaning a large educational dataset and selecting two variables of interest to run a statistical analysis on. i chose the variables surrounding students' perception of instructor feedback and student academic level because i was interested in exploring how an instructor's openness to receiving feedback influences students' educational experience. additionally, i aimed to investigate which groups of students, whether undergraduate or graduate, were more likely to provide feedback and perceive their instructors as being receptive to feedback. my hypothesis was that graduate students, due to potentially having a more collegial relationship with their professors, would feel more empowered to shape their learning experiences compared to undergraduate students. through this study, i hope to contribute to ongoing conversations around the importance of agency, autonomy, and community building in the classroom.
abstract
feedback has a strong influence on student learning outcomes (hattie & timperley, 2007). hattie and timperley (2007), define feedback as a “consequence of performance” where students receive either positive or negative feedback in relation to their work. there is a lot of literature on the impact of instructor feedback on student learning outcomes (gan et al., 2021; goddard et al., 2015; hattie & timperley, 2007; lo, 2010; umbach & wawrzynski, 2005). but the literature is scarce on the impact of student feedback to instructors on student learning outcomes (harris & stevens, 2013; shah et al., 2016). universities have often leveraged student evaluations of teaching (set) and course evaluation feedback (overall & marsh, 1979; campbell et al., 2005; yao & grady, 2005; harris & stevens, 2013; shah et al., 2016; sulis et al., 2019). but these typically come in at the end of the semester and whatever changes are implemented as a result of these impact a new set of students, not the set that gave feedback (harris & stevens, 2013; shah et al., 2016; sulis et al., 2019). therefore, it can be difficult to ascertain what the impact of the improvements is on the students’ learning experience (harris & stevens, 2013). as a result, some faculty members have taken to asking for feedback in the middle of the semester either informally through casual conversations and check-ins with students or formally through mid-semester student feedback sessions (overall & marsh, 1979; harris & stevens, 2013). faculty have leveraged this strategy to make timely course corrections to their pedagogical approach to improve student learning experiences and learning outcomes (harris & stevens, 2013; shah et al., 2016). furthermore, studies have asserted that the most effective teachers are those who not only inspire students (langbein, 1994) and provide challenging work (campbell et al., 2005; whittington, 2001), but also value student feedback as a means of improving their teaching (yao & grady, 2006).
the connections between students and teachers, as well as students' perceptions of their instructors, have a significant impact on students' engagement in academic pursuits (amerstorfer & freiin von münster-kistner, 2021). harris, g. l. a., & stevens, d. d. (2013) also found that by implementing mid-course corrections, instructors were perceived as being responsive to students' learning needs, and students may reciprocate by providing more positive end-of-course evaluations. in their study, overall and marsh (1979) discovered that the utilization of midterm student feedback yielded several benefits for faculty - including faculty recognizing a positive correlation between midterm student feedback and student learning outcomes and an increase in faculty motivation to adjust their pedagogical approach. these outcomes can help foster a learning environment that is conducive to collaboration and growth between faculty and students (harris & stevens, 2013).
this study seeks to explore the relationship between student perceptions of their instructor's openness to feedback and student learning outcomes.