Feedback Seeking Exploration Study on Entrepreneurial Project (Academic) Performance

In the era of competence, performance becomes highly appreciated for being an embodiment of selfcompetence. Increased competence and performance achievement is a process that involves the other party. Feedback seeking behaviour is assumed to be a variable that will affect the process of increasing competence and performance, especially in a learning process. This research aimed to see the correlation between feedbacks seeking behaviour to student’s academic performance. An effective feedback from their mentor can influence student’s academic performance in a positive way. A quantitative-descriptive design was used in this research. A random sampling questionnaire and secondary data from Entrepreneurship 2 program of Universitas Ciputra such as overall student’s grades were used to obtain the result. The finding of this research consequently helps the lecturers to design a better feedback giving and seeking behaviour.


Introduction
In general, feedback is the most inexpensive and intense tool, yet this tool is very uncommon to use, especially in Asia.Feedback that done correctly helps people get on the track and serves as a guide to support people to know how they and others perceive their performance.Feedback can also be very stimulating and encouraging.It has correlation to feedback seeker productivity.It is hard to be very self conscious without feedback from others.However, feedback giving and seeking behaviour do not fit the culture in South East Asia.Online articles written by Szkudlarek, Betina (2017) state that "The cultural gap linked to differences in communication, attitudes and behaviours between the East Asian and the Anglo-Celtic employees results not only in misunderstandings, but also a loss in performance for companies."Further, the article states "East Asian employees can't take or give feedback".With that statement, it is not a habit for East Asian in general to do feedback giving and seeking.Another online article written by Mulkeen, Declan (2016) also quote from The Harvard Business Review (HBR) that looks into how different cultures require different kind of feedback in a recently published article.Mulkeen, Declan (2016) writes about several approaches in communication especially connected to culture stereotypes.Indirect communication approach is found mostly in many Asian cultures.Indirect communicators are often to use words the HBR label as 'down graders'.
Indirect communication is used mostly when providing negative feedback or other evaluation and assessment.Indirect communication can soothe the negative message.Most likely, these words include several term such as 'a bit' or 'maybe'.With that said, this research try to build awareness on feedback giving and seeking behaviour and evaluate it's correlation to the academic performance especially in Asian cultures.
In current years, fact-finding by Stenger (2014) writes that "his research has reaffirmed that giving students with relevant feedback can profoundly intensify learning and enhance student achievement.Professor James Pennebaker from the University of Texas at Austin has been analysing the advantage of repeated feedback can provide such support to the students.He gives an explanation that in the history of the research of learning, the position of feedback has always been the main focus.When people are trying to acquire new skills, they need some feedback to validate whether or not they are still in the right track."This is similar with learning situation in the classroom.However, Stenger (2014) wrote "not all feedback is effective, and it can even be counterproductive, especially if it's done negatively or corrective way".Reynolds (2013) stated in her article that unfortunately several teachers think that the only way a student will learn is by giving negative and corrective feedback.RME/Vol.01/No.02/2017 The study aimed to answer the following question "Does feedback seeking behaviour have a correlation with the academic performance of E2 students?"The study may benefit the Entrepreneurship Program coordinator to understand the effectiveness of feedback giving to Entrepreneurship student's academic performance.This may also lead to create better measurement instruments of feedback giving to entrepreneurship facilitators.

The Value of Feedback
Boston in McNaught and Benson (2015) states that "awareness of the gap between their current knowledge and skills can be obtained in the process of feedback seeking".Hattie (2003) in McNaught and Benson (2015) signifies that "feedback was one of the most important factors to enhance student performance over time".Meanwhile, Morrison in Hays and Williams (2011) states that "the researchers have hypothesized that the process of feedback seeking minimize unreliability, which leads to enhanced job performance and encourage positive job attitudes".Williams and Hays (2011) based on Ashford andCummings (1983) explain that "researchers have normally examined that there are two strategies individuals use to obtained feedback information.First, feedback seeker may get feedback through monitoring that involves observation of environmental factors and others' performance, reactions and interpersonal behaviours.Individuals use this data to interpret essential performance feedback.The next strategy involves direct question involve actively seeking information from relevant interviewees".
As reviewed by Ashford, et al., (2003) in Williams and Hays (2011), "the primary motive of feedback seeking is the essential benefit that provides the seeker.In other words, feedback that delivers distinctive information is sought because it will help feedback seeker to readjust and achieve in the organization.However, the main stimulation of appreciated feedback value is contradict by feedback seekers' motives to defend themselves from information that could harm their perception of being judged (i.e., perceived feedback seeking costs)".Ashford in Williams and Hays (2011) also explains that "The self-presentation cost of feedback seeking refers to the risk of embarrassment that feedback seeker may be uncovered to by obtaining feedback.The focus of the self-presentation cost of obtaining feedback is associated to others' perceptions of the seeker".Previous research captured by Williams and Hays (2011) shows that "There are negative correlations between perceptions of high self-presentation costs to the frequency of feedback seeking".Northcraft and Ashford, 1990 state "The ego cost of feedback seeking is concerned with the individual's self-concept".Ashford in the research in 1986 also writes that "by seeking evaluative information, individuals take the risk of hearing negative or distressing information about themselves, thereby threatening their sense of self.Previous research has shown that if individuals have low performance expectations they reduce their feedback seeking".
"As teachers, it is important that we frame the process of giving feedback a positive, or at least a neutral, education experience for the student" (Reynolds, 2013).Reynolds (2013) also adds that "The motive of feedback in the learning process is to enhance a student's performance, instead of putting a hindrance on it.A teacher has the clear role to encourage a student's learning and to give feedback in such a manner that the student does not feel frustrated.The ultimate objective of feedback is to support students with an optimist attitude".Hattie and Timperley (2007) in Reynolds (2013) support this by saying that "when feedback is mainly cynical, research have reveal that it can dispirit students' effort and performance".

The Four Feedback Levels
In order to framing feedback questions that can navigate the students to aware about the "gap" between desired goals and their current performance, there are at least four levels of feedback according to Hattie and Timperley (2007).First, "feedback can be about the task or product".Hattie and Timperley (2007) write "In this situation, feedback will have more impact if it is more about providing facts and data to suggest corrective information, guide the students to look more or different set of data, and construct deeper knowledge or understanding about the task or the product.This level of feedback is most frequent and mainly feedback seeker sees feedback seeking process in these terms.It is many times designated as curative feedback or knowledge of conclusion.Most likely, this kind of feedback is given in classrooms via teacher questions, it is usually given in form of comments on assignments, it is often general in specific task, and it can be very useful particularly when the learner is a beginner".Unfortunately this kind of feedback usually given to a whole class in RME/Vol.01/No.02/2017general related to the assignment, and students do not consider this kind of feedback relevant to them, so it can be provided by the teacher yet not received well by the students.This first level of feedback is a foundation to successfully construct the second and third level of feedback.The second level is "feedback aimed at the processes used to create the product or complete the task".According to Hattie and Timperley (2007), "This level of feedback is used to look for alternative processing, reduction of cognitive responsibility, allocating action plan for recognize error, revaluate of method, indicating to seek more effective information search, and engagement of assignment strategies.Feedback at this process level performs to be more powerful than at the assignment level for intensifying deeper learning, and there can have a strong interactive result between feedback directed at refining the action plans and practices and feedback directed at the more surface assignment information.The conclusion can facilitate in enhancing assignment assertive and self-efficacy, which as a result able to support initiative for more successful and ingenious information and strategy seeking".For instance, Chan (2006) tries to make an experiment in a failure circumstances and then he discovered in the finding that "feedback was more suitable to improve self-efficacy when it was formative rather than summative and self-referenced rather than comparative to other peers' feedback".The third level is "feedback focused at the selfregulation level" or the student's observing of their learning processes.Hattie and Timperley (2007) wrote that "Feedback at this level can improve students' skills in self-evaluation, support greater self-assurance to occupy further on the assignment, able to oblige in the student finding and receiving feedback, and can increase the desire to spend effort into finding and interacting with feedback information.When students can supervise and self-regulate their learning they can more successfully utilize feedback to minimize disparity between their current position in learning and the desired results or accomplishment of their learning."The fourth level is "feedback directed to the self-image".This level of feedback is an extra to support level 1 to 3. Usually teachers need to say something like "You are a great student," or "Well done".Based Hattie and Timperley (2007) research, they wrote that "Often times it divert the attention away from the assignment, processes or self-regulation".Compliments can provide contentment and nurtured feeling, and if this present in classrooms, this feedback is embraced and anticipated by students.However, this kind of feedback rarely brings improvement in academic performance in general.In line with this, Kessels, Warner, Holle, and Hannover (2008) mentioned that "They experimented in giving feedback to students without compliments like the teachers were proud of them, led to decreasing of engagement and effort rather than when the statements of compliment were made".However, Hyland and Hyland (2006) highlight that "When teachers' feedback was all about compliment, and premature and unjustified praise can confuse students and tend to prevent students to revaluate their performance.Most likely, teachers utilize compliment to lessen critical comments, which can weaken the good effect of such comments".Compliment often times incorporate little assignment in seeking information and is seldom to transform into more commitment to the learning goals.It also slightly raises the student self-efficacy and does not improve students understanding about the assignment.Hattie (2009) Kung (2008), collectivist and individualistic feedback seeker looking for feedback to minimize things they don't understand.However, feedback seeker with collectivist culture background were more likely to welcome self-criticism "for the good of the collective" and more likely to find developmental feedback, whereas individualistic students avoided such feedback to protect their ego.Individualistic feedback seeker were more likely to involved in self-helping feedback method, as the feedback seeker hope to get self-acknowledgement and manage to attain certain results according to Brutus & Greguras (2008).Hyland and Hyland (2006) explain that "Feedback seeker from cultures where feedback giver are often using instruction in their feedback generally welcome feedback, anticipate feedback giver to aware and comment on their mistakes, and feel dissatisfied when they do not".3. "Disconfirmation is more powerful than confirmation".Feedback is needed to reassure student's assumption of hypotheses.This kind of feedback is called confirmation and proven to be weak in boosting performance.On the other hand, Nickerson (1998) states that "Disconfirmation feedback is all comments that related to corrects an inaccurate idea or assumption or that provides information that contradicts the current expectations".Feedback seeker often seeks reassurance and affirmation.Usually feedback seeker looking for feedback that confirms their current knowledges, and unfortunately ignores feedback that contradicts to their prior knowledge.However, disconfirms kind of feedback can push a greater change, provided this feedback can be given with empathy of feedback seekers understanding and limitation.

The Value of Performance and
Achievement in Academic Setting According to Minnesota (2007) in Alos, et al., (2015), "the higher education performance depends upon the academic performance of graduate students".Bangcola (2016) in the journal states that "Grades as a measurement of academic performance are important to both students and faculty." Alos, et al., (2015) confirm that "The students are the key assets of universities".They add that "The students' performance plays an important role in producing best quality graduates who will become great leaders and manpower for the country thus responsible for the country's economic and social development".Employers usually considered employee's academic achievement particularly for the fresh graduates before hiring them, according to Alos, et al., (2015).Further, Alos, et al., state that, "Students have to put the greatest effort in their study to obtain good grades and to prepare themselves for future opportunities in their career at the same time to fulfil the employer's demand.However, the factors affecting a student's academic performance arise from several reasons.Thinking skills primarily affect student's learning faculties if they do not learn what they need to learn.If teachers do not know how to catch the attention of a student, the student cannot make himself attentive to that subject.Student gets lazy if they think that the subject he perceives is not so relevant to their course; nonetheless, they still study it."In this study, academic performance is assumed to have correlation to with the student's ability to accomplishe entrepreneurial project goals.Bellon, Bellon, and Bank (1992) write that "Academic feedback is a powerful tool and normally related to performance than any other teaching behavior".They also write that "This correlation is consistent nevertheless of grade, socioeconomic status, race, or school setting.Most students can attain the same level of achievement as the top 20%, when feedback and corrective procedures are utilized".Marzano (2007) supports Bellon's statement by saying that "The most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback.The simplest prescription for improving education must be dollops of feedback".The definition of feedback according to Kluger and DeNisi RME/Vol.01/No.02/2017(1996) is an "Actions taken by an external agent to provide information regarding some aspect(s) of one's task performance".Which is obviously puts highlight on achievement.In most classrooms achievement related to the learning process, the accomplishments of the students, and the attitudes during the learning process.Under some state, feedback unfortunately can weaken the student's performance.

Entrepreneurship 2 Program
Entrepreneurship 2 is compulsory subject that needs to be taken by Universitas Ciputra students across all study programs.Entrepreneurship 2 is the second stage out of five stages for students to create their own sustainable business model.Entrepreneurship 2 learning objective is to make students able to design business models and validate those business models based on their ability to recognize opportunity and provide innovative selling point to the potential customers.Entrepreneurship 2 is using project based learning to encourage students using their creativity and innovation competence.There are two formative assessments and 2 summative assessments to get the overall grade performance of Entrepreneurship 2. Two formative assessments includes students process to find potential problems (ideas) to start their own ventures, and students process to validate and develop business model to fit the market needs.
The overall performance and achievement is their ability to set up a business model that fit the market validation and needs.

Research Method
This study used Quantitative type of research.The researcher used the descriptive survey method throughout this study.The primary goal of this quantitative study was to examine the correlation of feedback seeking behaviour to academic performance as measured by their grade point average.The descriptive design was used to describe the feedback seeking and academic performance of Entrepreneurship 2 students who were enrolled in Universitas Ciputra during the second semester of School Year 2016-2017.Descriptive research approach was utilized to explain the feedback phenomenon in Entrepreneurship 2. Descriptive research does not make accurate predictions, and does not determine cause and effect.Ethridge (2004) says that, "Descriptive research may be characterised as simply the attempt to determine, describe or identify what is, while analytical research attempts to establish why it is that way or how it came to be".Fox and Bayat (2007) describe that "Descriptive research is aimed at casting light on current issues or problems through a process of data collection that enables them to describe the situation more completely than was possible without employing this method." The correlation method of research was used to determine the relation between feedback seeking and academic performance.A questionnaire to measure the effectiveness of feedback was developed based on previous studies.There are three indicators to measure feedback in this research.The first one is the perception of feedback giver from the student's perspective.The second one is the frequency of feedback seeking behaviour by the students.The last indicator is the student's perception of their performance improvement after applying the feedback given by their facilitators.The questionnaires were distributed twice to the respondents.The first one was to check the validity and reliability of the questionnaires.After the questionnaires were confirmed valid and reliable, the questionnaires were distributed once again to gather data from 300 students.The sample was chosen randomly from total population of 987 students.We chose 12 students randomly out of 25 classes in E2.A simple random sample was chosen to retrieved unbiased data sample of a large population.The valid filled questionnaires were finally used to retrieve the data.The data retrieved from the questionnaires were then processed statistically along with the overall grade point of the students of Entrepreneurship 2 to see the correlation.The overall grade point was used as the performance measurement of the students.It included their progress point during discovery, planning, actualization, and evaluation phase of their entrepreneurial project.

Treatment of Data
The data were analyzed by statistical method."Cronbach's alpha is used to assess the reliability, or internal consistency, of a set of scale or test items" as it said by Goforth, 2015.In other words, Goforth explains that "The reliability of any given measurement refers to the extent to which it is a consistent measure of a concept, and Cronbach's alpha is one way of measuring the strength of that consistency".Further, he adds that "Cronbach's alpha was used to compute and correlate the score for each scale item with the total score for each observation (usually individual survey respondents or test takers), and then comparing that to the variance for all individual item RME/Vol.01/No.02/2017scores".Tabel 1 in appendix shows that all measuring instruments used in this research are already within reliability scale.The result of the reliability test approved the measuring instruments for further analysis.
The method used to analyze the data was inferential statistics.As such, Pearson Correlation was used to get results to determine statistical significance.When there are two quantitative variables, a Pearson's correlation is used.In this research, we used data survey on feedback using scale 1 to 5 and students overall grades of Entrepreneurship 2. The feedback scale 1 is for the least favorable and 5 is the most favorable to the student's experience.Meanwhile, overall grade of Entrepreneurship 2 was used to show the student's entire semester performance.There are three possible hypotheses of this research.
H1 : There is a positive linear correlation between the feedback and students' academic performance.. H2 : There is a negative linear correlation between the feedback and students' academic performance.H3 : There is no linear correlation between the feedback and students' academic performance.
We ran the validation test of the data used in this analysis, and the results showed the data were adequate enough to reveal the finding to answer those three hypotheses.

Table 2. Anova and Pearson Correlation Achievement to Feedback Source: SPSS (2017)
The findings in Table 2 reveal that "There is no significant correlation between performance and feedback".Based on the significance of annova it can be concluded that there was no correlation between Feedback Search behavior with student's E2 Project Achievement.The significant value correlation between performance to feedback and feedback to performance was 0.751.This 2 tailed significant value was off the range from 0.00 to 0.05, thus, there was no significant correlation between two variables used in this research.These findings resonated with the findings of previous research by Jason et al (2015).Jason, et al., (2015) say that there is no direct or moderating effects were found for the instrumental motive (feedback) on performance ratings.The findings were also similar to the conclusion of Rasmussen, Mosey, and Wright's research (2011) that there was no correlation between feedbacks seeking behavior with student value or student capacity in completing entrepreneurial tasks.
From the results, it can be temporarily deduced that the Feedback seeking behavior has no effect on self-mastery and academic performance (self-performance).This is in line with the findings of De Stobbeleir, Ashford, and Buyens (2011).Feedback seeking does not reflect actualization of internal motivation based on positive impulse to make improvements and effort to achieve results, (Ashford, Blatt, & VandeWalle, 2003).Feedback seeking has yet proven to have benefits that can be used to improve competence and achievement of results or targets, (VandeWalle, 2003).Students or feedback seekers are unmotivated because they do not find improvement in their achievement, (Whitaker & Levy, 2012).These findings raise an awareness of the effectiveness feedback seeking behavior in Entrepreneurship classes especially in Entrepreneurship 2. The findings was also being discussed with several facilitators and Head of Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) at Universitas Ciputra.The discussion led to conclusion that certain guidance is needed to design a better feedback giving and seeking behavior in Entrepreneurship 2 program.A feedback giving and seeking behavior guide will help facilitators or educators and students in general to have an effective feedback that can improve student's performance and achievement in entrepreneurship classes.Feedback itself is very important for Entrepreneur.Managing feedback in a positive way is important to Entrepreneur so that it can help the Entrepreneur to raise their "game" and level up their businesses.Someone who takes feedback well, are people who can learn and grow quickly.

Guide for the feedback seeker
There are at least three essential elements of feedback by Black and William (1998) that can be use as guidance to facilitators and students.They write in their research that RME/Vol.01/No.02/2017"Recognition of the desired goal is the first one, followed by evidence about present position (current work), and finally some knowledge of a method to close the gap between two variables".In Locke and Latham's literature (1990), they say that "Goals are commonly defined in terms of the performance standards to be attained, and researchers have investigated the impact of goal dimensions such as goal specificity and difficulty".With this saying, the most important thing about feedback seeking and giving is the clarity of the feedback seeker's goals.Secondly, feedback seeker needs to bring documents, or portfolio of their performance and the problems they found in their activity.These documents and portfolio help to show the feedback giver about the evidence of the current position.Eventually, students need to gain information on how to achieve their expected result from their current position with the help of facilitators or educators.Students need to realize their own capability and resources on how to achieve their goals and perform well in their process.

Guide for the feedback giver
It is suggested that the feedback giver in this research not only comes from facilitators or educators in class but can also come from student's peer.The feedback giver needs to nurture, guide, and direct the feedback seeker to set and achieve their own goals based on the feedback seeker's ability and competence.It is important to understand that feedback giver does not judge the lack of performance, or even push their sense and understanding to the feedback seeker.Based on the previous research by Hattie and Timperley (2007), it is suggested to give four levels of feedback as explained in introduction section of this research.
Based on previous research by Hattie (2009), it is suggested that "Students from individualist or Socratic cultures (e.g., USA) favoured straight forward feedback especially related to effort, and usually use direct questions to seek feedback, and favoured more individual focused self-related feedback".According to Kung (2008), "Collectivist and individualistic feedback seeker looking for feedback to minimize things they don't understand".They further said that "Collectivist students were more likely to welcome self-criticism and more likely to seek developmental feedback.Meanwhile individualistic students avoided direct feedback to defend themselves".

Limitation
The finding of this research is also limited to several variables that have been ignored such as component of student's assignment that were used to calculate the correlation.We assumed the Entrepreneurial Project performance is based on the overall grades of Entrepreneurship 2 program.We did not see each feedback correlation to each assignment or task.We did not conduct this research with consideration of feedback quality itself.This research sample was only limited within Entrepreneurship 2 project only.Project nature that is different from any other project was not taken as part of consideration.The effectiveness of feedback is still in the high range of differences according to several factors that follow such as culture, habit, feedback seeker readiness, and feedback giver competence.We believe that further research is needed to find a good method of feedback giving so that it is effectively received by the feedback seeker.There should be several instruments that need to be developed to evaluate the time frame, categorizes, and influence of feedback to the feedback seeker.

Conclusions and Implications
Educators have to know that there is a wide range of variation in the effectiveness of feedback.Many facilitators and lecturers suggested to spend most of their time effectively in providing feedback to students.However, feedback is meaningless if it does nothing to improve student learning as the finding shown in this research.Educators are encouraged to understand this, but they are often exhausted by the endless cycle of teacherdriven assessment and feedback.Educators sometimes miss valuable opportunities to inspire active learning in classrooms.Even though the fact that students infrequently apply the carefully crafted feedback of their teachers, educators are still encouraged to create challenges and invitation for students to be more active in the feedback process.
There are needs for educators as feedback giver to be unambiguous and gradually giving more challenging goals.Feedback giver also needs to develop empathy of a feedback seeker's current knowledge and skills relative to the expected results.The goals and criteria of success are important to be clear and understood.
The implication of this research is to design a better feedback activity and leads to further research on effective feedback.Within this research, effective feedback is suggested by making guidance for feedback giver and feedback seeker.For feedback giver, there are four feedback levels to help students or RME/Vol.01/No.02/2017feedback seeker in general.Feedback giver needs to correct and direct the feedback seeker, point out the process, coach students to critique their own efforts, and affirm what students did well.Meanwhile for feedback seeker, it is important to set and understand the goals, realize their current position, and eventually understand how to use their resources such as skills, knowledges, or network to close the gap between their expected outcomes and their current position.Eventually, there are greater benefits when evaluation is seen as a way to provide feedback to students of their current position and knowledge.Asian culture needs to learn more about feedback giving and seeking since it is not accustomed for us to see feedback as an important part of learning.

Giving is not receiving".
mentions at least nine variables that can influence the effects of feedback on achievement in his research, but within this research, we quote only these three variables: 1. "