There has been an explosion of feedback research in the past 10 years (Haughney, Wakeman, & Hart, 2020). The literature is increasingly recognising that the true impact of feedback comes not from the framing of comments themselves, but from students’ proactive engagement with and enactment of feedback comments (Nicol, 2020). However, the capacity for students to seek, make sense of, and use feedback to inform future learning requires teachers to show sensitivity to the emotional impact of feedback, manage competing tensions to focus on feedback for student learning, and design opportunities for students to implement feedback.

Sadler’s (2010) paper entitled “Beyond feedback” was possibly the first one to look at the importance of developing student capacity to make use of feedback, arguing that students cannot convert feedback statements into actions for improvement without sufficient working knowledge of some key concepts: Boud and Molloy’s (2013) added that feedback is not something that comes in a course by chance, but it must be carefully designed and students have to be taught how to give and act on feedback. The concept of feedback literacy arose (Carless, & Boud, 2018) to support the development of competences for students and teachers and the importance of designing learning environments encouraging feedback processes. Nicol (2020) moves forward the debate to how students generate internal feedback by comparing their work with that of others.

In this new paradigm that understands feedback as facilitating learning (Carless, 2015), of central importance is students’ engagement with feedback. Students’ engagement aims to know how well feedback has led to changes in behaviour, performance and understanding (Price, Handley, Millar, & O’Donovan, 2010). Student engagement within feedback processes consists of two interrelated activities (mindful processing and sense-making of comments, and reasoned decision-making for uptake) and suggests the need of skills to implement it: self-appraisal, assessment literacy, goal setting and self-regulation, and engagement and motivation (Winstone, & Carless, 2020).

Being the topic of feedback of current interest, the latest publications have posed several important directions for future research. One of them is the intersection between student engagement, assessment, feedback and educational technology, and more concretely how can assessment and feedback processes can be enhanced through creative uses of technology and in digital learning environments (Holmes, 2015). Or how an institution can influence student engagement through curriculum design, i.e., the design of assessment formats, self-assessment or peer assessment practices in online or blended-learning environments (Bond, Buntins, Bedenlier, Zawacki-Richter, & Kerres, 2020; Zellweger, Meia, & Keck Frei, 2021). Whether students’ increased engagement with learning is a direct consequence of formative e-assessment, and their learning can improve because of more continuous assessment and online feedback methods are still to be examined.

Considering the actual remote teaching situation, and the appearance of new online learning environments and tools, research on engaging students with feedback in online teaching is crucial. We want to know how students uptake feedback that is provided digitally, or what peer feedback experiences in online settings encourage engagement and why, among other aspects. For this reason, there is a need for a systematic literature review.

Our paper will present a literature review of the last 5 years (before and during COVID19 pandemic) on student engagement with feedback in digital learning environments. It will include publications of top journals across the globe and in different languages discussing feedback research in totally online and blended-learning settings. With such review, we aim to answer the following questions:

• How do teachers design and facilitate effective feedback processes in digital learning environments?
• How do students engage in online feedback?
• What are the factors supporting students’ engagement with feedback in online settings?

Systematic literature review around the definition and characteristics of student engagement with feedback in higher education digital learning settings is presented. Provided the explosion of publications in hundreds of scientific journals across the globe during the last decade and at present, conducting literature reviews periodically is necessary to find out the new contributions in a given field of knowledge to help advance it. Petticrew and Roberts’s (2006) methodology for executing systematic reviews will be used. First, a systematic literature search will be conducted by using several databases that yield literature from higher education in top journals of different languages (English, German or Spanish). To limit the search, a publication date from 2010 to 2021 will be used. In addition, only articles that are journal articles and peer-reviewed will be selected. The literature search is being conducted during first half year of 2021. The resulting articles will be subjected to various inclusion and exclusion criteria and a quality check following the CASP guidelines (Singh, 2013) will end with a final limited sample of studies. Data gathering will be placed in Excel and will then be imported into MAXQDA. Summative content analyses and co-occurrence analyses will be performed to analyse the data and answer the research questions.

After completing the review, we expect to contribute to the knowledge on the topic, especially covering gaps in the research such as 1) ways of engaging students with feedback in digital learning environments, 2) effective online feedback and assessment practices that support long term learning and students engagement, 3) a deeper understanding on the factors enabling students engagement with feedback in digital environments (especially focusing on those conditions that students consider more favourable to learning and that stimulate them to self-regulate their learning in terms of cognitive and motivational aspects), 4) the need for a special feedback literacy for online setting, 5) looking at the challenges that digital enabled feedback has for students and teachers, and 6) identify new needs for further research. This study might be the first to establish a holistic definition of student engagement with feedback in digital learning environments. First, a strong theoretical basis will be created which can be further used by empirical follow-up studies that examine the types of student engagement in online feedback, for example according to disciplines. Second, the findings advance our current understanding of feedback literacy in online settings and provide a solid foundation for developing new practices. Third, it will support practitioners and academic developers to design evidence-based online programs.

–Bond, M., Buntins, K., Bedenlier, S., Zawacki-Richter, O., & Kerres, M. (2020). Mapping research in student engagement and educational technology in higher education: A systematic evidence map. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 17(1), 2. –Boud, D. & Molloy (2013) (Ed.). Feedback in Higher and Professional Education, London: Routledge. –Brown, E. & Glover, C. (2006). Evaluating written feedback. In C. Bryan & K. Clegg (Eds.), Innovative Assessment in Higher Education (pp. 81–91). London: Routledge. –Carless, D. & Boud, D. (2018). The development of student feedback literacy: enabling uptake of feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), 1315-1325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354. –Carless, D. (2015). Exploring learning-oriented assessment processes. Higher Education, 69(6). 963-976. –Haughney K, Wakeman S, Hart L. (2020). Quality of Feedback in Higher Education: A Review of Literature. Education Sciences. 2020; 10(3):60. DOI:org/10.3390/educsci10030060 –Holmes, N. (2015). Student perceptions of their learning and engagement in response to the use of a continuous e-assessment in an undergraduate module, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40:1, 1-14, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2014.881978 –Jonsson, A., & Panadero, E. (2018). Facilitating students’ active engagement with feedback. In A. A. Lipnevich & J. K. Smith (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of instructional feedback: Cambridge University Press. –Nicol, D. (2020). The power of internal feedback: exploiting natural comparison processes, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2020.1823314 –Petticrew, M., & Roberts, H. (2006). Systematic reviews in the social sciences: A practical guide. Oxford, England: Blackwell. –Price, M.; Handley, K.; Millar, J. & O’Donovan, B. (2010). Feedback: all that effort, but what is the effect? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(3), 277–289. –Sadler, D. R. (2010). Beyond feedback: developing student capability in complex appraisal, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35:5, 535-550, DOI: 10.1080/02602930903541015 –Singh, J. (2013). Critical appraisal skills programme. Journal of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapeutics, 4(1), 76. –Winstone, N. & Carless, D. (2018). Designing effective feedback processes in higher education. A learning-focused approach. London: Routledge. –Winstone, N. E., Nash, R. A., Parker, M., & Rowntree, J. (2016). Supporting learners’ agentic engagement with feedback: A systematic review and a taxonomy of recipience processes. Educational Psychologist, doi: 10.1080/00461520.2016.1207538. –Zellweger, F., Meia, J-S., &Keck Frei, A. & (2021). Student Engagement im Distance-Learning. Erste Ergebnisse zur Diskussion am Tag der Lehre. Tag der Lehre 2021. Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich.