Spaces, Gaps, Exchanges, and Student Engagement: A Review of Recent Trends in Formative Feedback Scholarship

This review examines the spaces, gaps, exchanges, and engagements associated with formative feedback in higher education – an area that has enjoyed extensive scholarly attention over the last two decades. Over time, a consensus has developed privileging timely, specific, supportive, and explanatory feedback over less effective measures that rely much too heavily upon directive, overly-negative, critical, and/or vague responses. Hoping to transform students into selfregulated and lifelong learners, formative assessment aims to reduce feedback gaps, maximize student-teacher dialogue, address critical student shortfalls, and encourage students to experiment, take risks, and achieve deep learning. Both an assessment and a learning tool, formative feedback looks beyond specific course and lesson objectives to address a student’s cognitive, behavioral, and motivational development, thereby allowing teachers and students alike to identify feedback and knowledge gaps, and, if necessary, to modify learning and teaching methods and objectives.