Students’ Engagement in Responding to Screencast Feedback during Thesis Writing

Abstract

This study addresses the challenge of limited clarity, emotional support, and revision guidance often experienced by students during thesis writing, a process that requires sustained engagement with complex academic expectations. It examines how university students interact with screencast feedback while developing their theses, focusing on affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of engagement. Using a case study design, the research involved ten undergraduate students in an English education program who received screencast feedback from their supervisors. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews exploring their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses. Thematic analysis was then employed to identify patterns across the data. Findings indicate that screencast feedback fostered positive affective engagement by enhancing enjoyment, reducing anxiety, and increasing motivation through its clear explanations and supportive tone. Cognitively, students demonstrated improved comprehension of revision points, stronger recognition of writing patterns, clearer visualization of corrections, and greater metacognitive monitoring supported by the ability to pause and replay feedback. Behaviorally, students engaged actively by rewatching segments, revising step by step, taking detailed notes, applying feedback beyond targeted sections, and verifying revisions through self-evaluation. The study highlights that screencast feedback promotes holistic engagement that strengthens emotional readiness, deepens cognitive processing, and encourages sustained revision practices in thesis writing, implying that its multimodal features can substantially enhance students’ ability to manage complex academic writing tasks. The findings suggest that incorporating screencast feedback more systematically into supervisory practices may provide a valuable means of supporting students’ development as autonomous academic writers.