Academic feedback and performance of students in institutions of higher education: Who is in control and how does our feedback impact students?

Attending higher education institutions and achieving academic success are associated with positive outcomes, valued at individual and societal levels, such as reducing unemployment and poverty and increasing civic participation. Thus, many studies have focused on enhancing learning by examining the factors that affect students' performance, including the teaching behaviour most strongly related to academic success. Within this research framework, in a population of social sciences students on different degree routes, the relationship between academic performance and different components of academic feedback is explored. The feedback students received in the dissertation module, which had two assessment points, was examined. The first assessment point feedback was statistically analysed to find changes in the grade point average of students between their first submission (T1) and the final dissertation (T2). Analysis to assess the impact of students' performance on the structure and content of feedback, as well as the extent to which the content of the feedback, can affect T2 grade increases.