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Feedback has been shown to substantially influence students' learning. However, not everything characterized as feedback is effective. Sustainable feedback places students in an active role in which they generate and use feedback from peers, self or others and aims at developing lifelong learning skills. First-year higher education students and tutors received sustainable feedback during their problem-based learning. To gain insights into how they perceived the sustainable feedback, students were probed via structured, open-ended questionnaires. While all participants positively valued the feedback, their personal characteristics, previous experience with feedback and concomitant perceptions appeared to have greatly influenced both tutors' and students' specific, individual behavior and responses. Conclusion is that sustainable feedback requires an evolving role of students and tutors with respect to sharing their perceptions of what feedback is, understanding the value and importance of feedback contributions of all participants, and developing the necessary skills to ask questions and give feedback.

This study explored the relationship between individual self-regulated learning (SRL), socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL), and group performance plus the effect of an intervention promoting SSRL. We hypothesized that SRL would influence SSRL and group performance as groups with high SRL students will be better regulated and that the intervention would promote SSRL over time. The results revealed a significant relationship between SRL and SSRL, but no significant effects of the intervention on group performance. The limitations of the intervention are discussed and form the basis for future design of environments to promote SSRL. The main conclusion is that SRL is an important predictor of SSRL and should be considered when designing small group activities and their environments.

A team is more than a group of people in the same space, physical or virtual. In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to the social bases of cognition, taking into consideration how social processes in groups and teams affect performance. This article investigates when and how teams in collaborative learning environments engage in building and maintaining mutually shared cognition, leading to increased perceived performance. In doing so, this research looks for discourse practices managing the co-construction of mutually shared cognition and reveals conditions in the interpersonal context that contribute to engagement in these knowledge-building practices. A comprehensive theoretical framework was developed and tested. The constructs in the model were measured with the Team Learning Beliefs & Behaviors Questionnaire and analyzed using regression and path analysis methodology. Results showed that both interpersonal and sociocognitive processes have to be taken into account to understand the formation of mutually shared cognition, resulting in higher perceived team performance.

Quality control policies towards Dutch vocational schools have changed dramatically because the government questioned examination quality. Schools must now demonstrate assessment quality to a new Examination Quality Center. Since teachers often design assessments, they must be involved in quality issues. This study therefore explores teachers' opinions on assessment quality evaluation criteria. Pre-vocational and vocational teachers (N=211) responded to a questionnaire. Contrary to expectations, results show that teachers deem classical and competency-based quality criteria equally important. Vocational teachers gave higher importance scores than pre-vocational teachers, possibly due to the pressure they experience to improve the quality of their assessments.