An evaluation of formative feedback and its impact on undergraduate student nurse academic achievement

Formative feedback is widely considered best pedagogic practice to develop and support deep learning, however evidence to support its use and impact on academic achievement is limited. This module evaluation used formative work submitted to Blackboard©, actual student feedback provided and examination board results detailing final achievement, for 353/115 students on one core module in a UK based undergraduate (UG) programme. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics and the χ2 test, whilst qualitative data from written feedback provided by academic staff was analysed using thematic content analysis. Findings for this group of students indicates those who submitted formative work were significantly more likely to obtain an A grade while students not submitting formative work were more likely to fail. However both quantitative and qualitative analysis indicated this was independent of the amount of feedback, the nature of feedback or the member of academic staff who provided the feedback. This has interesting implications, if students who submit formative work achieve higher summative grades irrespective of formative feedback provision or individual academic staff member, the value of providing written formative feedback must be questioned, and reasons behind this initial finding require more in depth exploration.