Abstract:

Assessment is one of the most powerful drivers of student learning, yet its potential is often undermined by a fundamental problem: students do not engage meaningfully with the feedback they receive. Research consistently shows that feedback is read once, poorly understood, and rarely acted upon. Students struggle to interpret what feedback means, how it connects to assessment criteria, and what concrete steps they should take next. This disengagement is not a motivational problem; it is a design problem. Feedback systems in higher education have largely been built around institutional requirements rather than students’ learning processes

The consequences are significant. Without consistent engagement with feedback, students repeat the same errors across assessments, fail to develop self-regulatory skills, and miss the iterative improvement cycle that assessment is designed to support. Educators, meanwhile, invest substantial time writing feedback that generates little measurable impact on learning outcomes.

This paper examines the structural barriers that prevent students from engaging with assessment feedback and presents evidence from a case study developed through a design thinking approach conducted in collaboration with students and educators across higher education. The case study centres on a feedback analytics tool that enables students to actively annotate, categorise, and reflect on feedback, construct action plans, and track their own engagement patterns over time. For educators, the tool provides class-level visibility into how students are interacting with feedback, enabling more targeted and timely intervention.

Drawing on analysis from this case study, the paper explores what meaningful engagement with feedback looks like in practice and the conditions required to support it. Working directly with educators and students across University of Warwick, the research highlights how scaffolded feedback structures can shift feedback from a passive, one-directional experience into a more active process of interpretation, reflection, and improvement. The paper argues that closing the gap between feedback provision and student action requires not only better feedback, but tools and structures that support students in understanding, interpreting, and responding to the feedback they receive.

Keywords:

Assessment.