Unravelling the complexities of tutors' feedback in distance education

In distance education, where opportunities for face-to-face interaction are rather limited, tutors' feedback on assignments appears to play an even more crucial role, as it can affect students' motivation, performance, learning and development. This article reports on the results of a study on the feedback four tutors teaching Oracy and Literacy Skills in the M.Ed. of Teaching English as a Foreign/International Language at the Hellenic Open University (HOU) provide first-year EFL teacher-students with. More specifically, drawing on Wion (2008) and Hyland's (2001) multi-faceted frameworks of feedback analysis, and comparing them to the HOU feedback categories, we propose a new, more condensed model of analysis and examine feedback on four students' assignments through four lenses: content, organization, language accuracy and affect. This analysis attempts to shed some new light on the quantity and quality of Hellenic Open University tutors' feedback, spot similarities and differences between tutors' feedback which could be attributed to varying amounts of tutoring experience and explore to what extent students' emotions are considered. The study concludes by suggesting ways in which feedback on assignments can be improved to open and maintain a multidimensional dialogue between tutors and students in distance education and how it can contribute to students' development at several levels, such as cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, social as well as affective.