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THE POWER OF FEEDBACK LITERACY
‘We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve’. Since Bill Gates made this statement in 2013, minds have evolved. Feedback is no longer seen as merely passing on information, but rather as an essential part of a learning process. Moreover, it is not enough to receive feedback, you also have to learn to use it and actively seek it in yourself. Kurt Coppens, Technology Expert in Mathematics & Communication Skills at De Nayer Campus, conducted research on feedback literacy in engineering education.
The term ‘feedback’ does not come from learning psychology but rather from electronics. The word first appeared in 1920 and refers to the return of a fraction of an output signal to the input of an earlier stage. In the 1950s, it appeared in dictionaries as ‘information about the results of a process’ that allows a system to regulate its own activity. For example, a thermostat controls central heating by transmitting the temperature of the environment to the heating system and adapting to it accordingly. Such control systems also exist in living organisms and, by extension, in contexts where they interact with each other. “In education, feedback has evolved from a one-way movement to a learning-centred process that encourages learners to actively engage with the information fed back, Kurt says. “However, giving feedback is not the end of the matter. It comes down to creating a learning environment that encourages learners’ engagement in feedback processes. The skills involved in this come under the heading of feedback literacy.”
Education research
Kurt graduated in 2008 as an engineer in Plastics Processing at the then BrugesOstend University College, now KU Leuven-Brugge. He followed the first year at Campus De Nayer but his interest in materials science brought him to Ostend where a new specialisation in Plastics Processing had started. After his studies, Kurt first worked as a Process Engineer and Application Design Engineer at SaintGobain Performance Plastics in Kontich near Antwerp, a company specialising in precision sealing for the space, aviation, energy and life sciences industries.
In 2012, Kurt returned to De Nayer campus as a scientific collaborator in the Additive Manufacturing research group. In parallel, he follows a teacher training programme because teaching also appeals to him. In no time, he became assistant, giving seminars and practice sessions and supervising laboratory work. In 2020, he joined the ETHER research group founded by Professor Greet Langie -then vice-dean of Education at the Faculty of Engineering Technology. “The dynamism of the young team was contagious but also the focus on non-technical competences convinced me to delve into research on education”, Kurt continues. “Moreover, an interesting opportunity immediately presented itself: the KU Leuven Innovative Digital Learning Project on ‘Continuous Feedback’. This research opened the way to a PhD.”
New concept
Feedback literacy is a fairly new area of research in education science. Kurt is therefore one of the first researchers to survey this competence among engineering students. He studied its evolution from the moment students start the programme until they obtain their bachelor’s degree.
“Because we are dealing with a new concept, there are no standardised instruments to measure the development of feedback literacy yet”, Kurt says. “Consequently, I combined different methods, both quantitative via questionnaires and qualitative based on reflection logs, focus group discussions and interviews. By the way, this mix revealed a curious discrepancy. While in the quantitative research we hardly saw any change in feedback literacy, the qualitative results did indicate a positive evolution. This underscores the importance of using qualitative instruments to validate findings derived from quantitative instruments.”
Reflective logs
Kurt further investigated how students reflect on their feedback experience and how that translates to their feedback literacy. He found that while students are aware of the importance of feedback, they are therefore not always willing to act on it. Therefore, Kurt recommends making feedback processes much more explicit in engineering education. “Students who were introduced to the concept of feedback literacy more often referred to feedback on their lab reports as important experiences contributing to their learning. When those students were involved in peer feedback activities, they also recognized the value of the feedback from their peers in their reflective writing, which is an important step in identifying the multitude of possible feedback opportunities.”
Finally, Kurt took a closer look at the link between feedback literacy and reflection itself. In the reflective logs, he found that students with higher reflective ability also scored better in feedback literacy. Another key finding of the study is that mixedmethod study approaches (quantitative and qualitative) are preferable to further explore the potential of a new feedback literacy scales and methods.
