Uptake of formative feedback: perspective from a transnational education cohort

An important aspect of teaching and learning is the student's response to and enaction of formative feedback. Few studies have examined how students interpret the formative feedback provided by tutors and translate these into action. In order to understand this better, we carried out a retrospective analysis of student responses to iterative formative feedback. The context of the present study is an extracurricular project where undergraduate biomedical science students on a transnational education programme competed in an extracurricular, cross-disciplinary video competition. Based on detailed analysis of provided feedback and subsequent enaction of the feedback, we found that students were active participants in the feedback process, engaged with the meaningful feedback critically, and incorporated the relevant changes to improve the final output. In this article, we will give our perspectives on how students understand, process and act on feedback, and also examine the features of the feedback that elicited these responses from students.