Formative Assessment through Supervisory Feedback on Undergraduate Thesis Writing

This study examines supervisor written feedback as a form of formative assessment on undergraduate thesis writing. The objectives of the study are to: (1) determine the frequency of types of feedback, and (2) examine patterns of change in the frequency of feedback across three drafts of writing. The study involved the writing of the final year project proposal by five undergraduate students in a global communication degree program. Each student had a different supervisor, and three drafts of their final year project proposal were analyzed. The theoretical frameworks of the study were Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and Sadler’s theory of formative assessment. The analysis revealed that directive feedback constituted the majority of the responses, accounting for 56.6% of the 369 total comments. This was followed by referential feedback at 29.8%, and expressive feedback at 13.6%. A closer examination of the commentary provided by five supervisors across three successive drafts identified two distinct patterns. First, there was a marked reduction in the volume of feedback by the third draft. For instance, Supervisor 1 initially made 70 comments (57%) on the first draft, which declined to 38 comments (30.9%) on the second draft and further to 15 comments (12.2%) on the third. In contrast, other supervisors, such as Supervisor 5, demonstrated greater consistency in the early stages, offering 29 comments (41.4%) on both the first and second drafts before decreasing to 12 comments (17.1%) in the final draft. The tracking of supervisors’ feedback over drafts produces novel findings on the usefulness of the supervisor’s scaffolding in getting undergraduate students closer to writing conventions in the research community.