Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Nurse Education Today journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nedt Feed-forward: Paving ways for students' subsequent learning Lubna Ghazal a, ⁎ , Amina Aijaz a , Yasmin Parpio a , Ambreen Tharani a , Raisa Begum Gul b a Aga Khan University, Pakistan b Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, Pakistan ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Feed-forward Outline versus draft Written feedback Subsequent learning ABSTRACT Background: Written feedback assists students in refining their future academic work. However, students prefer having feed-forward instead of feedback by their instructors that are the comments provided to them on drafts prior to the actual assignment submission. The current literature describes two common ways to convey feed- forward: the foremost one is on outlines while the second is on drafts. However, no existing literature had been found yet for sufficient guidance on the ideal approach of feed-forward to facilitate students' subsequent learning. Design: A Quasi-experimental study design was employed to determine the effectiveness of feed-forward on outline versus drafts. Setting: Study was conducted in a private nursing institution in Karachi, Pakistan. Participants: 118 third-year undergraduate nursing students participated in the study. Methods: Using consecutive sampling, 118 students were enrolled and equally divided in to two groups, each comprising of 59 students in the control and intervention arm. Control group received feed-forward through standard practice i.e. on their assignment outline while the intervention group received feed-forward on the draft of their scholarly paper. Results: The performance of intervention arm had an upper hand over that of control wing as portrayed by their increased overall assignment and academic writing scores (of students on IELTs bands). The set outcomes also reflected better results in terms of the (reduced) frequency of visits to their instructors for clarification of written feedback. All in all, this research deduced that feed-forward on drafts is far more beneficial in contrast to that on an outline as it reinforces students' learning. Conclusion: The study findings affirmed that feed-forward is a useful strategy to enhance students' subsequent learning. 1. Introduction Feedback is an essential part in the learning experience of any student. Since achieving higher grades have always been an important goal for students, they prefer to receive detailed feedback either before or during their work in order to improve it. Feedback can play an ef- fective role in not only their academic performances, but also in re- fining their inter-personal skills if it is timely and motivational. There has been an escalating emphasis on feed-forward in academic studies across the globe. (Wingate, 2010; Carless, 2006; Gibbs and Simpson, 2003, 2005; Lizzio and Wilson, 2008). Feed-forward is defined as the comments or feedback provided to students by instructors on their as- signment drafts or on the outlines prior to the actual task submission. A vast majority of students have expressed great satisfaction over the rising trend of feed-forward as opposed to the penalized feedback owing to their rewarding nature (Ghazal et al., 2014). Literature has identified several benefits of feed-forward. For instance, it engages students in a one-to-one dialogue with their teachers for subsequent learning. This in turn, keeps them on track, results in meeting instructor's expectations. In addition, intelligent utilization of the feed-forward paves way for students to work hard and eliminate their shortcomings before the final submission (Conaghan and Lockey, 2009; Koen et al., 2012; Murtagh and Baker, 2009; Baker and Zuvela, 2013). In the light of literature, feed-forward can also be provided on drafts and/or assignment out- lines. However, so far no evidence has been found to compare the ef- fectiveness of feed-forward on outline versus drafts. Hence, the current study was aimed at assessing the effectiveness of feed-forward on drafts versus outlines of assignments in a Mental Health Nursing (MHN) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2018.09.010 Received 15 February 2018; Received in revised form 15 August 2018; Accepted 11 September 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: lubna.ghazal@aku.edu (L. Ghazal), Amina.aijaz@aku.edu (A. Aijaz), Yasmin.parpio@aku.edu (Y. Parpio), Ambreen.tharani@aku.edu (A. Tharani). Nurse Education Today 71 (2018) 116–120 0260-6917/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T