Perception of online feedback and its impact on cognitive and emotional engagement with feedback

Online feedback plays a key role in learning, but this requires that students engage with feedback. Some authors identify students’ perception of feedback as relevant to understanding engagement. To measure the effect that perceived feedback (specifically its valence) has upon engagement with feedback, a quasi-experimental study has been carried out between two groups of master’s students (191 students, 91.6% women, with a mean age of 30.6 years): a group in which students had the possibility to resubmit an assignment after feedback and another group in which students only received feedback at the end of the assignment. Results show there are no significant differences between both groups regarding the perception of the feedback. However, the results point to the importance of feedback valence perception in resubmission situation. In this situation, a significant relationship between emotional engagement and cognitive engagement with feedback was identified depending on how the feedback was perceived. The main conclusions are the need of incorporating opportunities for resubmission to promote engagement with feedback, the relevance of the perception of feedback, and the role of emotional engagement plays in relation to cognitive engagement with feedback.