Automated Formative Feedback for Enhancing Summarizing Skills: The Impact of Feedback Characteristics, Learner Factors, and Instructional Prompts on Feedback Engagement and Effectiveness in Higher Education

Formative feedback is widely recognized for its effectiveness in enhancing learning processes, such as improving summarizing skills. However, delivering individualized formative feedback remains a significant challenge for university educators, particularly in large courses. Automated formative feedback systems offer a promising solution by providing timely, actionable support at scale. However, a thorough understanding of both the provider’s and receiver’s automated formative feedback processes is needed when effectively integrating such systems into university teaching practices. Therefore, this dissertation investigates whether and under which conditions automated formative feedback effectively fosters summarizing skills among university students, address-ing three key dimensions with three studies: feedback characteristics, individual learner factors, and instructional factors. To investigate these dimensions in depth, the first study examined the effectiveness of automated formative feedback in fostering summarizing skills. The findings reveal that automated formative feedback significantly improves summarizing skills, especially when students engage in multiple feedback loops. A second study investigated the joint influences of motivation, mental effort, and feedback engagement over time, revealing their significant impact on learners’ engagement with feedback. The findings underscore the need to foster students’ willingness to allocate mental resources to seek feedback more frequently. With a third study, instructional prompts were compared to automated formative feedback and their combined effects were examined. While prompts supported summarizing skills, they were less effective than feedback, and their combination did not yield additional benefits, indicating potential substitution effects. The studies trace the intricate processes involved in providing and utilizing automated formative feedback, while shedding light on its strengths and unrealized potential. These findings and their implications for learners and instructors in higher education will be discussed.