Sutanto, 2015 THESIS WRITING SUPERVISION: A CONTRIBUTION OF FEEDBACK TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF
STUDENTS ’ THESIS WRITING
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia |
repository.upi.edu |
perpustakaan.upi.edu
60
2.2.7. Sources of feedback
The sources of writing feedback discussed in this study are supervisors and tutors and peers.
2.2.7.1. Supervisor’s Feedback
Supervisor‘s feedback helps students to know the strengths and weaknesses in their writing. It encourages the students to improve their writing and makes them
confident. It is the respons ibility of supervisors to read student‘s thesis and give
sufficient feedback on it within the allocated length of time Murray, 2002, p. 70. Nicol McFarlane-Dick 2006 state that feedback should be motivational for
learners and the process of providing feedback should enable supervisors to develop their supervision further. Feedback expected by learners is a more
systematic strategy which leads to more motivation during learning that finally results in a better learning outcome, Vollmeyer Rheiberg 2005. However,
many learners find that the feedback they receive unsatisfactory. There is almost problem with the feedback students receive from their supervisors. For example,
―If students sense that a course is badly implemented, that they are overloaded with work, that there are no clear goals and poor feedback then they are more
likely to respond with surface then deep approaches, irrespective of the pedagogy or the technology being deployed by the teacher‖ Ellis et al., 2008.
Supervisors need to provide sufficient feedback on student‘s work to improve their thesis quality, to encourage a deep approach to learning Biggs,
2003, and to engage with the feedback they receive Mills and Matthews, 2009. As we know that each student has their own attitude and preference on feedback
for examples, some of them like the comments only and some others like good grades only. It may mean that giving comments only can be a very effective way
of providing feedback but Black et al. 2003 suggest that providing ungraded
Sutanto, 2015 THESIS WRITING SUPERVISION: A CONTRIBUTION OF FEEDBACK TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF
STUDENTS ’ THESIS WRITING
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia |
repository.upi.edu |
perpustakaan.upi.edu
61
comments may not be enough to encourage students to take notice. Black et al. 2003 argue that the most important thing is that comments should tell students
what they did well and what they needed to do to improve their work. Brown Glover 2006 suggest similar idea that written feedback should be encouraging,
showing students where they went wrong and how they could improve. Further Nicol McFarlane-Dick 2006 state that providing the motivational element is
an important part of feedback practice. Providing appropriate, inspirational and encouraging feedback is not
simple. Some supervisors may give better feedback than other supervisors or students. Cho et al. 2006 find that instructors thought that another instructor‘s
feedback was more helpful than students‘ feedback. However, there also has been
evidence that instructors may not be able to accurately judge what students will find intuitive or difficult Nathan Koedinger, 2000. In fact, one study found
that students did not rate supervisor‘s feedback as more helpful than students‘ feedback Cho et al., 2006. To make it worse, ―teachers consistently thought that
they provide more an d better feedback than their students felt when they received‖
Prystowsky DaRosa, 2003. For those reasons, Wisker et al. 2008 suggest
the following expectations on supervisors: a giving the critique in a constructive way, b providing good knowledge of the research area; either personally, or by
referring to an expert to access this knowledge, c making sure to ask open questions, d putting the students in touch with information, and e supporting
the students to enter the academic community such as attending appropriate conferences and introducing them to other researchers in their field. The
expectations above do not mean that the supervisors would do the students‘ work but would assist them to produce high quality thesis.
2.2.7.2. Tutor’s feedback
