Feed-forward: Paving ways for students’ subsequent learning

Background: Written feedback assists students in refining their future academic work. However, students prefer having feed-forward instead of feedback by their instructors that are the comments provided to them on drafts prior to the actual assignment submission. The current literature describes two common ways to convey feed-forward: the foremost one is on outlines while the second is on drafts. However, no existing literature had been found yet for sufficient guidance on the ideal approach of feed-forward to facilitate students’ subsequent learning. Design: A Quasi-experimental study design was employed to determine the effectiveness of feed-forward on outline versus drafts. Setting: Study was conducted in a private nursing institution in Karachi, Pakistan. Participants: 118 third-year undergraduate nursing students participated in the study. Methods: Using consecutive sampling, 118 students were enrolled and equally divided in to two groups, each comprising of 59 students in the control and intervention arm. Control group received feed-forward through standard practice i.e. on their assignment outline while the intervention group received feed-forward on the draft of their scholarly paper. Results: The performance of intervention arm had an upper hand over that of control wing as portrayed by their increased overall assignment and academic writing scores (of students on IELTs bands). The set outcomes also reflected better results in terms of the (reduced) frequency of visits to their instructors for clarification of written feedback. All in all, this research deduced that feed-forward on drafts is far more beneficial in contrast to that on an outline as it reinforces students’ learning. Conclusion: The study findings affirmed that feed-forward is a useful strategy to enhance students’ subsequent learning.