Informative tutoring feedback strategies in university calculus teaching: effects on students’ performance, self-efficacy and calibration

Informative tutoring feedback strategies (ITF-strategies) support students in digital learning environments by providing solution-specific hints and insights into errors without revealing correct answers. While prior research on ITF-strategies in mathematics education has mainly focused on arithmetic tasks, research on tasks in higher education remains scarce, as evaluating them requires specialised systems. To address this, the ITF-strategies summarising and guiding feedback were designed using the assessment system STACK. Both ITF-strategies aim to provide students with error-specific hints, but when the cause of an error is unclear, summarising feedback offers detailed explanations, whereas guiding feedback directs students into task loops to work on specific sub-steps. To investigate the effectiveness of both ITF-strategies, 64 students of a mathematics course at a German university were divided into two groups, receiving either summarising or guiding feedback. At the end of the course, students’ performance, self-efficacy and calibration were measured. Multiple ANOVAs were conducted to examine the differences between the two groups. Results revealed that guiding feedback significantly improved students’ performance, self-efficacy and calibration compared to summarising feedback. Further analysis indicated that students engaged more intensively with guiding feedback. Overall, the findings suggest that guiding feedback holds potential as an effective ITF-strategy in higher mathematics education.