PROCEEDINGS OF THE 23RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2020
Boston, Massachusetts
A tale of two sides: Students’ feedback preferences and professor’s feedback provisions
Page: 520
The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ engagement with and utilization of the proof feedback from their professor, and their feedback preferences. We interviewed seven participants about their general experience with feedback on proofs. We then continued interviewing four of these students periodically about the feedback they received on specific selected proofs to see how they interpreted the feedback they received and how they utilize the feedback when asked to revise their proof production. The results showed that the majority of participants had a strong preference towards explicit feedback and, in contrast, that professors provided primarily implicit feedback. Furthermore, we found that students did not read professors feedback when they received satisfactory grades on their proofs, they usually only utilized the feedback when working subsequent assignments or studying for exams, and they did not use the Professors’ feedback to rewrite their proof production.