E-feedback intersections and disconnections in the interests of designers and users

Well-designed assessments allow teachers to get information about students' knowledge and the depth of their understanding of subject matter. E-learning provides many possibilities for embedded formative assessments yet also presents many challenges for programming such e-feedback. Coding e-feedback features into the software offers instructors more varied, powerful, and unobtrusive assessments but also requires particular ways of use to capitalise on these capabilities. The design of e-feedback is based upon the assumption that e-learning tasks generate participant performance data for inferences about students' knowledge and skill. The three cycles of research and design with the ETIPS online case-based learning environment summarised in this paper demonstrate that instructors may value the task offered by the e-learning resource but not its associated feedback, while students' desire for feedback can exceed the technical limits to provide it. It then discusses implications of these tensions between developers' visions for e-feedback and the realities of its use by college instructors and students.