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James designs assessment activities that require students to engage with and apply core principles, and to develop their scholarship through a critical review of scientific literature. His assessments would therefore seem to align well with his intended learning outcomes, namely that students engage with the concepts and develop an ability to formulate an argument informed by evidence:

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“What I’m actually trying to do is create skilled people who are able to rationalise

an argument.” (L)

Such alignment is thought to encourage a deep approach to learning (Biggs & Tang, 2007) and so at first sight it may be surprising that the majority of the students seemed to adopt a surface approach to learning. The preponderance of a facts focus in the current study might explain why the students were more likely to adopt a surface approach. However, there were examples in this study of a mismatch between the student’s perception of teaching and learning and their approach to learning, suggesting other factors are influencing the

approach adopted. This finding would seem to support Joughin’s (2010) contention that there is little evidence that good assessment design alone can serve to induce a deep approach to learning.

Reasons for Adopting a Surface Approach to Learning: One of the criticisms of the theory of deep and surface approaches to learning is the tendency to blame the student for adopting a surface approach (Case & Gunstone, 2003). This could certainly be seen to be the case with the

description of a surface approach as being one in which a student’s intention is

to complete the task with minimal effort (Biggs & Tang, 2007). It seems pertinent therefore to explore possible reasons why the students in this study might have adopted a surface approach.

One explanation for students adopting a surface approach could be that they possess a narrow conception of learning and limited strategies for approaching assessments, so do not know how else to tackle their studies (Boulton-Lewis et al., 2001). This seemed to be the case with one student in this study (S8): whilst her learning focus was a combination of concepts and facts, she described limited learning strategies:

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“Read it over and over again…reading it and writing it out.” (S8)

For some students in this study, a surface approach seemed to be a survival strategy, either because of time constraints or because the student was struggling with the course material:

“I try to make as much time as I can.” (S2)

“That’s too complicated so I don’t actually read a lot.” (S10)

The notion of the surface approach being a survival strategy is supported by Entwistle (2000), who suggests that students might adopt a surface approach in order to cope with the task, and by Case and Gunstone (2003), who suggest that even when students recognise the limitations of a surface approach, their perception of time constraints might prevent them from feeling able to adopt a different approach.

5.3 Students Perceive Different Purposes of Feedback

This section considers the second research question: what do participants perceive as the purpose of feedback? For the purpose of this study, feedback

has been defined as “information which provides students with an indication of their current performance, suggestions to help them improve future performance and helps equip them with the self-regulatory skills to become

lifelong learners.” Students’ perceptions of the purpose of feedback only partly supported this definition: students agreed that feedback can provide information about the current task or suggestions for future improvements, but also considered feedback as being a justification of the grade.

Some students considered the sole purpose of feedback as being to provide correction for factual errors or misconceptions. Whilst clearly relating feedback to learning, the focus was purely on that particular assignment:

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“It shows [where] you got the wrong end of the stick." (S6)

Several students considered the purpose of feedback was at least partly to help them improve their work in the future: again this could be through correcting misconceptions, but also through offering suggestions to improve writing style:

“It’s a nice reminder next time I write something for any lecturer just make sure I’m

being clear and concise.” (S1)

This is in contrast to the findings of Storch and Tapper (2000), who reported few students perceiving guidance for future learning as a purpose of feedback.

Relatedly, some students saw feedback as an opportunity to better understand

the lecturer’s preferences, which they perceived as helping with future

assignments for the same lecturer:

“To me a lot of the feedback is figuring out the lecturer.”(S6)

Although expressed in very narrow terms related to individual lecturer preferences, this perceived purpose of feedback could be widened to feedback providing an opportunity to help assimilate students into ways of thinking in the discipline (McCune & Hounsell, 2005).

Some students in this study perceived the purpose of feedback as being to justify the grade awarded:

“I like to hear why I've got a specific grade.” (S3)

Whilst feedback comments sometimes can be considered as offering a rationale for the grade (Sadler, 2010), the usefulness of such feedback for learning is minimal (Orrell, 2006).