The Importance of Feedback and Assessment in Learning Process

This essay examines the significant advantages of feedback and assessment within the educational context. It defines feedback as crucial information provided to students to improve their performance and assessment as a process of evaluating student progress. The essay highlights how feedback and assessment clarify grades, identify and reward quality work, motivate students, and guide improvement. It also discusses how these processes help students adapt learning strategies, foster interaction, and improve teaching methods. The essay emphasizes the importance of feedback for both students and teachers, ultimately leading to enhanced learning outcomes and a better understanding of how to improve educational practices. The provided references support the claims made in the essay, offering a comprehensive view of the benefits of assessment and feedback in higher education.

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BENEFITS OF FEEDBACK AND ASSESSMENT IN LEARNING
By ()
Name of the course
The name of Tutor
Name of the university
The city and country where its located
Date

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Benefits of feedback and assessment in learning
Feedback is very critical in facilitating learning. Feedback can be defined as
information that flows back to the students with a commentary on their work and
suggestions on how they can improve their performance (Ibarra-Sáiz et al., 2020).
This system is a little bit different from the grading system since apart from telling
where a student has met or not met expectations, it explains where the student has
done well and where they need to improve so that they can learn more. Learning is
about acquiring knowledge, which leads to a lasting impact on the student, which can
be used to make a change in various sectors in life. Apart from feedback, assessment
is also very critical. Evaluation refers to the process of evaluating and measuring as
well as documenting the performance of a student, skills acquired as well as student
needs by using a variety of methods and tools (Tong, 2016). Feedback can be
described to be part of the assessment process. This is because, once the evaluation of
performance is complete, a teacher explains areas where the student performed
strongly and areas where they need to make improvements. Feedback and assessment
are under the areas of activity according to the UKPSF framework.
Feedback and assessment have several benefits that facilitate learning. One of the
advantages of feedback is that it justifies how the students got the marks that they
attained (Moya and Tobar, 2017). Giving the student grades without an explanation
discourages learning since it denies them an opportunity to understand their areas of
strength and areas of weaknesses. Giving them feedback enables students to
understand why where they performed well and where they performed poorly and
understand why they scored a particular grade in a specific sector. This is very
important in learning since it gives a student clues on sections they can focus on to
improve and also enables them to maintain where they are performing well.

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Feedback and assessment are also critical in learning since it identifies and rewards
specific qualities in student work (Moya et al., 2017). Feedback and evaluation are
relevant sources of motivation for a student and hence enabling them to become eager
to learn more. Once a student is assessed, and feedback is provided, the student is
rewarded either directly or indirectly. A student can be paid by giving them a material
reward such as money or by an intangible reward such as a scholarship. Even if a
person is not given any reward, once they understand how they are performing, they
get motivated to learn more and do better, and those who had not done well are
motivated to learn and improve their position (Panadero, Jonsson and Strijbos, 2016).
For example, a student who has emerged in the first position in an assessment will be
motivated to maintain their position. In contrast, a student who emerged last/who
performed poorly will be very anxious to improve their performance in the next
assessment. This, therefore, means that without assessing the learning of the students
and giving them the necessary feedback, they may lose their motivation to learn, and
learning might not seem to be important to them anymore.
According to Wanner and Palmer (2018), assessment and feedback are also critical
since it guides a student in understanding the steps that they need to take to improve.
Even the best student will always have room for improvement, and it is, therefore,
necessary that they understand ways in which they can learn further. Feedback and
assessment in learning provide an opportunity for students to know what they need to
do to improve or maintain their current levels. Apart from providing the grade and the
feedback on the reasons why a student got a particular grade, the process of
assessment helps in guiding the students in ways that they will improve their learning.
For example, after assessment, the tutor can call a student for one on one meeting

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where they can explain the steps that the student needs to take to become better. E.g.,
the student could be advised to improve their grammar or critical thinking.
Assessment and feedback help students to adapt their learning strategies and hence
improve learning. As a tutor assesses the students' performance, they are likely to
understand the strategies that students are trying to apply in their learning. If the
students learning methods are not effective, the tutor will recommend that the student
uses a different approach to help them improve their performance by adapting or
changing their learning strategies (Zhang and Zheng, 2018). For example, a student
who was focusing on cramming rather than understanding will be advised to be keen
to understand so that the knowledge acquired can be retained for a long time and can
be useful to the learner.
Through feedback and assessment, reflection, interaction, and dialogue is initiated and
hence improving learning. Interaction and dialogue among students and with the
teacher are critical in enhancing learning. This is because, once students get assessed
and understand their performance, there is likely to be a debate on the feedback
methods used, and some students might want to understand further why they failed to
perform well (Rowe, 2017). This, therefore, allows them to learn from their
colleagues who performed well in a particular subject. The students will be able to
exchange ideas and learning strategies, which aids in improvement in learning.
Apart from the benefits that feedback provides for learners, feedback is also critical
for teachers to improve their delivery techniques (Deeley, 2018). For example, after
learners get feedback regarding their performance, they may explain to the tutor on
how the teaching methods used by the teachers could be impacting their performance.

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This, therefore, enables the tutor to adjust their strategy to use techniques that will
improve the performance of the student and hence contributing to an improvement in
the overall learning of the students. For example, the teacher might improve the
presentation or use more practical experiments to help students learn more and hence
improve performance.

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References
Deeley, S.J., 2018. Using technology to facilitate effective assessment for learning
and feedback in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education,
43(3), pp.439-448.
Ibarra-Sáiz, M.S., Rodríguez-Gómez, G. and Boud, D., 2020. Developing student
competence through peer assessment: the role of feedback, self-regulation and
evaluative judgement. Higher Education, pp.1-20.
Moya, N.P.G. and Tobar, M.C.S., 2017. Formative Evaluation and Formative
Feedback: An Effective Practice to Promote Student Learning in Higher Education.
Revista Publicando, 4(12 (1)), pp.321-333.
Panadero, E., Jonsson, A. and Strijbos, J.W., 2016. Scaffolding self-regulated learning
through self-assessment and peer assessment: Guidelines for classroom
implementation. In Assessment for learning: Meeting the challenge of implementation
(pp. 311-326). Springer, Cham.
Rowe, A.D., 2017. Feelings about feedback: The role of emotions in assessment for
learning. In Scaling up assessment for learning in higher education (pp. 159-172).
Springer, Singapore.
Tong, S.Y.A., 2016. Exploring students’ perception of and reaction to feedback in
school–based assessment. Malaysian Journal of ELT Research, 7(2), p.44.
Wanner, T. and Palmer, E., 2018. Formative self-and peer assessment for improved
student learning: the crucial factors of design, teacher participation and feedback.
Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(7), pp.1032-1047.

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Zhang, L. and Zheng, Y., 2018. Feedback as an assessment for learning tool: How
useful can it be?. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(7), pp.1120-
1132.