When it comes to feedback, what do students want? To help answer that question, Dr. Kristen Wall elaborates on five themes brought to light by her doctoral dissertation, which focused on at-risk adult students from millennials to baby boomers and linear and non-sequential learners.

“Adult students likely have prior experience and have opinions about what they want from their educational experience.”

“They have no tolerance for faculty members who don’t provide good [personalized, specific and measurable] feedback – vague academic terms mean nothing to them.” If they feel instructors are not giving adequate feedback, they will look to friends and family whether those people are appropriate subject matter experts or not. Right or wrong, they rely on Google a lot if instructors don’t provide a good example of what is expected.

In this interview, Dr. Wall discusses these five themes that students want in feedback and addresses how we can meet their expectations.