Instructor Feedback: How Much Do Students Really Want?

Marketing students expect feedback on papers and assignments; and many professors expend much time and effort providing individualized and substantive comments in response to student work. Doing so is challenging and time consuming when faced with large class sizes, high student-faculty ratios, and communications-intensive courses. Furthermore, instructors observe that though students often express desire for feedback, some do not appear to use it. The results of this study suggest that when an instructor provides a lot of feedback, as opposed to a small amount of feedback on an assignment, students receive it negatively. The results also suggest that students respond no more positively than when offered no feedback comments at all. Results suggest that if an instructor wants students to be receptive to the feedback provided because they believe it is fair, because they like the instructor, or because they feel the instructor has a positive impression of them, the instructor should provide only a modest amount of feedback or a moderate number of clear and specific feedback comments. Alternatively, an instructor who wants to offer students a greater amount of feedback needs to allow them to revise and resubmit their assignments.