Feedback: A Key Component in the Design, Development and Validation Stages of Online English/FL Materials

For the past few years, the authors have been working on the design and development of an online First Certificate in English (FCE) preparatory course and exam simulator in an attempt to provide a supplementary tool and resources for students aiming to achieve a B2 level of English. These materials have been designed in such a way that learners can follow and complete the activities either by being assessed by a remote tutor, or in a completely autonomous way. This makes the consideration, analysis and design of effective, efficient and constructive feedback an essential component in the whole design process. In this process, the concept of formative assessment needs to be taken into account from the initial stages of the design and development up to the last phase, and aims at validating the appropriateness of the contents and the resources which are part of the materials. This paper addresses feedback from a theoretical perspective while exploring its different roles from a practical point of view throughout these stages. The main objective is to present the pedagogical framework that has guided the whole design and development process, as well as to analyse the main parameters considered by the authors of these materials when designing and editing the feedback to be received by students after completing either automatically corrected or open input exercises and tasks. This entire process has been conductively aimed to offer learners the contents and all of the required additional tools, in particular corrective, personalised and formative feedback, in order to enrich the two main learning and assessment modalities: self-access and autonomous. Moreover, a description of the platform's main utilities, which allow material writers to edit, monitor and assess branched feedback in accordance with the students' performance, will be provided. [For the complete volume, see ED574893.]