Facilitating and Motivating Students’ Verbal and Visual Creativity in Higher Education through Assessment Feedback

Assessment is a necessary component of Higher Education. The practice of assessment enables educators to measure students’ level of learning and understanding within an academic domain. Several scholars have examined the effect of assessment feedback upon student’s motivation in subsequent assessment tasks (i.e., Harlan & Crick, 2003), however, no studies to date have produced concrete results on the effects of feedback upon creative performance in subsequent assessment tasks. This may be due to contradictory findings, with some studies suggesting that external stressors are detrimental to creative thinking (i.e., Amabile, Goldfarb & Brackfield, 1990; Shanteaum & Dino, 1993), whilst other studies report that a degree of stress is required to impose necessary constraints on the creative process (Somaz & Tulgan, 2003; Anderson et al., 2004). Yet, there is an on-going challenge for HE educators to offer assessments that encourage creative thinking (Young, 2005). Students display different responses to assessment feedback. For some students, feedback facilitates learning and achievement, whilst for others it hinders learning and achievement (i.e., Hattie & Timperley, 2013; Fryer, 2013). For a positive response to feedback, a student must perceive that the ability to self-correct any discrepancies between actual and desired performance is possible and achievable. Nicol et al. (2006) refer to this ability as ‘self-regulation’, and state that it is an essential element of the learning process.