Author: Anna Espasa Roca
Programme: Doctoral Programme on the Information and Knowledge Society
Language: Catalan
Supervisor: Dr Elena Barberā Gregori
Faculty / Institute: Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)
Subjects: Higher Education, Universities
Key words: Feedback, Regulation, Virtual environments, Higher education
Area of knowledge: Higher Education, Universities
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Summary
This research aims to respond to some difficulties emerging from the characteristics of an online environment, ie asynchronous and based on written communication. In this context, it is not easy to gather evidence showing that students are progressing towards achieving learning objectives. One of the mechanisms teachers have to facilitate learning is giving feedback during the educational activity. The focus of this research is to identify and characterize feedback processes in the specific context of online teaching and learning.
Feedback is conceptualized as a source of external regulation, provided by an agent whose aim is to promote the regulation of learning in order to facilitate the construction of knowledge. Little empirical study has so far been done around this research issue.
This dissertation comprises two studies. The first one is a quantitative study aiming to provide a general exploratory description of the feedback given in nine courses of different nature developed online. The results obtained allow us to identify the presence of feedback in virtual classrooms and a general exploratory description of the feedback from the student's point of view. The second study presents a micro-level analysis of the characteristics of feedback given by the teacher in the three courses which have been selected because they potentially promote the regulation of online learning at its best.