Evaluative feedback isn’t enough: harnessing the power of consequential feedback in higher education

Most research on feedback in higher education focuses on evaluative feedback and its recipience, uptake, and enactment. Evaluative feedback information includes judgments, critiques and suggestions for improvement provided by a teacher, peer, self, pre-programmed automatic feedback, or artificial intelligence tutoring systems. In contrast, we elaborate the neglected concept of consequential feedback. Consequential feedback offers information about the natural effect (consequence) of an action, such as getting burned when touching a hot stove, eliciting a laugh (or not) from a comedy routine, or the trajectory of a newly designed model rocket. This information is available during (simulated) professional/disciplinary/social practice when using professional or disciplinary tools or systems (e.g. stoves), audiences, clients, or products (e.g. comedy routines or rockets). We discuss how this concept builds on and extends the literature on feedback in higher education. We draw on examples from the health professions, business, mathematics and the arts to illustrate how we can harness the power of consequential feedback to create more impactful feedback. We centre educational simulations, first considering how non-human actors offer consequential feedback and then how human interactions embedded in role plays present consequential feedback. We conclude by exploring implications for research and practice.