Feedback turnaround time
Helen Puntha

Key points
Timeliness in feedback turnaround supports meaningful learning and is important for the following reasons:

• timeliness together with detail and quality of feedback all contribute towards the effectiveness of feedback
• feedback should be timely enough for students to comprehend its messages within the context of the submitted work
• feedback should be timely enough for students to incorporate learning points into future study and assessments
• student satisfaction with feedback is low nationally and within NTU compared to other aspects of the student experience. Promptness is an important part of this.

Summary
Reflecting the nature of recent changes in feedback policy at Nottingham Trent University, this resource will focus on one aspect of feedback, that is, the importance of timeliness in the provision of student feedback. It will seek to answer questions about the role that turnaround time plays in the overall effectiveness of feedback and will consider how a focus on turnaround time may impact on quality of feedback.

The importance of timeliness
Influential writers on higher education have highlighted the role that timeliness plays. For example, Chickering and Gamson (1987) include prompt feedback as one of their ‘seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education' stating that, ‘assessment without timely feedback contributes little to learning' (Chickering and Gamson, 1987, p. 3). Graham Gibbs, who has published extensively on assessment and feedback, is often quoted: ‘feedback should be timely in that it is received by students while it still matters to them and in time for them to pay attention to further learning or receive further assistance' (Gibbs, 2010a, p. 3). Other writers who have concluded that the usefulness of feedback is dependent on timeliness as well as effective feedback practices include Bryan and Clegg (2006), Race (2007) and Ramsden (2003). Arguably then, the further away from the time the work was produced; the less effective feedback will be with regard to its formative benefits.

Kulik and Kulik (1988, p. 94) concluded from a meta-analysis of 53 studies in 1988 that, ‘delayed feedback appears to help learning only in special experimental situations […] more typically to delay feedback is to hinder learning'. However, the length of turnaround time is not an issue of equal significance for all students (Thompson and Castro, 1988). Findings from a major Australian study indicate that more confident autonomous students are less concerned with prompt feedback; and turnaround time seems most critical for first year students, particularly for the first assessment (op cit).

Despite the importance of assessment for learning, changes in the UK HE sector have meant that feedback practices are under pressure. Recently, higher education has been characterised by increasing student numbers with a concomitant pressure on cohort sizes and staff to student ratios. The student body is also more diverse. Modularisation has, in many cases, led to modules running over a shorter period of time resulting in fewer opportunities for formative feedback (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004). It is in this climate that consideration of what constitutes quality in feedback on assessment is crucial, particularly as it relates to effectiveness for student learning.

Turnaround time and quality: an optimal balance?
The balance between timeliness and quality is not an absolute. Rather, it depends on the nature of each assessment task and on whether feedback associated with those tasks is intended to help students develop their current piece of work or to inform them of a judgement and offer ideas for future consideration. If the aim of feedback is to ‘… empower students to become self-regulated learners, able to make their own appraisals of the work they produce …' (Nicol 2010) then the ‘quality' of feedback will be determined by the extent to which feedback achieves its aim.

In the minds of many markers ‘quality' feedback is likely to be equated with detailed, written comments (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004); for students ‘quality' feedback may be synonymous with one-to-one or tutorial-type discussion. However, the ‘quality' of any given feedback is not wholly determined by the content of the message being communicated by a marker; instead it is realised through the engagement of students with those messages and hence the translation of those messages into improved student learning. Quality of feedback is not wholly dependent on promptness just as it is not wholly dependent on the content of the messages communicated within feedback. Promptness can however, act as an important mechanism for assessment to inform learning in the most meaningful way. Gibbs and Simpson (2004, p. 19) highlight this in their contrast between the possible effectiveness of perfect but slow feedback versus imperfect but faster feedback:

If students do not receive feedback fast enough then they will have moved on to new content and the feedback is irrelevant to their ongoing studies […] There may be a trade off between the rapidity and quality of feedback so that, for example, imperfect feedback from a fellow student provided almost immediately may have much more impact than more perfect feedback from a tutor four weeks later.

It is therefore not necessarily the case that an emphasis on timeliness necessitates a compromise on quality. On the contrary, promptness of feedback should be considered an integral aspect of effective feedback. Gibbs argues that the volume, quality and timeliness of feedback are all good predictors of educational outcomes (Gibbs 2010b, p. 15) with the underlying assumption being that attention should be paid to all three aspects of feedback.

Feedback and student satisfaction
Feedback is no longer simply a pedagogic concern, it impacts on students' satisfaction with their course and institution as a whole and as such it is an issue of major concern to most UK universities. In the 2010/11 National Student Survey, only 53% of Nottingham Trent students stated that feedback on their work had been prompt while only 56% felt that the feedback they had received helped them to clarify things they did not understand. Of course, there is a consideration in the way the sector has tended to read NSS data. Focus is on the percentage of respondents who were in agreement with a particular statement with an implication that the other respondents were in disagreement. However, another large grouping for NTU is the neutral response and students choosing this option may have been indicating that they were uncertain, ambivalent, or had had a range of experiences. This should not diminish our valuing of the data, but may influence our interpretation of it. The National Union of Students is concerned about the NSS results on assessment feedback and, in 2010, produced a Charter on Feedback and Assessment. This included an expectation that, ‘students should usually receive personalised feedback within three weeks of the assessment submission deadline. There could also be generalised group feedback on the key learning areas that affect most students within one week of the assessment'.

Policy at Nottingham Trent University
The Nottingham Trent University (NTU) policy on feedback to students on assessments states that ‘feedback should be timely enough to feed into the next piece of work, as appropriate to context' (Academic Standards and Quality Handbook, Section 15H). This policy has now been amended to require that students receive some feedback on all of their assessments within three calendar weeks of submission.

The potential for making changes to turnaround time is necessarily constrained or enabled by contextual factors, including the types of assessment used, feedback practices, student numbers etc. In particular, large cohort sizes and lengthy assessments contribute to the difficulties of turning work round quickly. Two main approaches to managing turnaround time are; control strategies which make the process faster and independence strategies which focus on improving student engagement with feedback (Land, 2005). This resource will address the use of control strategies and complements a further CADQ resource which seeks to improve student engagement with feedback (see engaging students in the use of feedback).

The introduction of the NTU requirement for three week turnaround on assessment feedback may mean that it is beneficial to work on making smaller changes to feedback practices in the short term (i.e., for the interim year 2011/12) whilst planning for larger scale change for 2012/13 onwards.

You may also be interested in:

• Assessment and feedback practices to reduce turnaround time
• Assessment and feedback design to manage turnaround time
• Marking and moderating text based coursework

Refences
BRYAN, C., and CLEGG, K., eds., 2006. Innovative Assessment in Higher Education. London: Routledge.

CHICKERING, A.W., and GAMSON, Z.F., 1987. Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin. [Accessed 19 October 2011].

GIBBS, G., 2010a. Principles of assessment. [Accessed 7 November 2011].

GIBBS, G., 2010b. Dimensions of Quality. York: The Higher Education Academy. [Accessed 7 November].

GIBBS, G., and SIMPSON, C., 2004. Conditions under which assessment supports students' learning Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. [Accessed 5 November].

KULIK, J.A., and KULIK, C.L.C., 1988. Timing of feedback and verbal learning, Review of Educational Research, 58(1), 79-97.

LAND, R., 2005. Streamlining assessment: making assessment more efficient and more effective. In: Quality Assurance for Higher Education, Enhancing practice: reflections on assessment, Volume 1 (Pp. 29-40).

NICOL, D. 2010. Four recent papers on assessment and feedback with significant implications for practice, QAA Scotland Enhancement Themes: Graduates for the 21st Century. [Accessed 15 May 2011]

RACE, P., 2007. How to get a good degree. 2nd ed. London: Open University Press.

RAMSDEN, P., 2003. Learning to teach in Higher Education. 2nd ed. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

THOMPSON, D., and CASTRO, F., 1988. Assignment turn-around time: perceptions and processes. In: D. STEWART and S.DANIEL, eds., Developing Distance Education: Papers from the 14th World Conference of the International Council for Distance Education. Oslo, August 9-16. [Accessed 10 October 2011]

UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH, 2009. Good practice in assessing students. [Accessed 25 October 2011].