Is there educational value in providing individualised feedback in addition to generic feedback to online course participants?

Provision of individualised feedback on assignment tasks in addition to generic feedback to fitness professionals participating in an online short course titled 'Exercise Prescription for Falls Prevention'. The generic feedback is a collation of the main strengths and weaknesses of the group as a whole for each assignment task. This feedback is standardardized for all participants and will be developed by the course facilitators after examining the assignment tasks. The course facilitators are physiotherapists with a minimum of 5 years experience in the area of falls prevention. The individualised feedback will be feedback specifically developed for each participant based on their own assignment task. Both positive aspects of the task along with some constructive criticism relating to the task goals and possible areas of improvement will be given. This feedback will be provided by the same course facilitators who provide the generic feedback. The mode of delivery of both the individualised and generic feedback will be the online learning platform (Moodle) used for the online course which can be set up to send email notifications. Both interventions will be provided for each of the four assessment tasks. All participants will be able to direct questions to their course facilitator based on the feedback given. Participants receiving individualised feedback will be encouraged to engage in the feedback given. The overall duration of the course is 6 weeks. This contains four weeks of active facilitation with an additional 2 weeks when educational materials will remain available for participants and it is expected the final knowledge test and course evaluation should be completed.