Abstract
A variety of feedback systems was evaluated with regard to their effects on college students' pertormance on written essay papers. The first system included a very general procedure that involved the notation of total points received in each major section of the paper; the second system involved the provision of specific points on subsections within major sections of the paper; and the third system involved the provision of written descriptive comments in addition to points on each subsection of the paper. A specific format was utilized by the experimenters to provide the descriptive feedback. A multiple-baseline design across three major sections of the essay papers was used to evaluate the effectiveness of each feedback procedure on the written content of the essay papers. Additionally, students were asked how satisfied they were with each f'eedback system. An evaluation of the essay papers showed that the mean percentage scores of the written compositions were higher during the descriptive-feedback condition than during the general-points condition, the specific-points condition, or the baseline condition. Results from student ratings suggest that the descriptive-feedback procedure was the most desired by the students and was the most helpful in improving their performance on subsequent papers.
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