Undergraduate management students’ perceptions of feedback in a New Zealand university

Feedback to students is an important feature of assessment in higher education. Constructive and timely feedback guides students to improve on a continuous basis in the process of their tertiary education. This paper outlines an exploratory study based on survey research, which was conducted on a large sample of undergraduate students on management courses in a New Zealand university. Following a review of the relevant literature a conceptual model was developed using systems thinking principles. A questionnaire was designed consisting of 20 closed Likert questions and two open questions designed to explore students’ perceptions of the feedback given to them on their formative assessments. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were undertaken of the data collected from over 600 valid responses. The quantitative analysis consisted of descriptive statistics, an exploratory factor analysis and Pearson's correlation analysis. The four main factors to emerge were: improvement of work quality, improvement of results, need for feedback and quality of feedback. The qualitative analysis was based on these themes. The results of these analyses are discussed in this paper. This paper attempts to contribute to the ongoing discussion regarding the better understanding of the complex relationships between feedback and student learning in tertiary level management education.