This paper explores students’ beliefs and perceptions about the role of feedback in contemporary teaching and learning processes. Higher education is increasingly challenged by a new epistemological paradigm in which knowledge is no longer linear or cumulative, but emerges through the aggregation of multiple fragments into meaningful networks, co-constructed through contextual interaction and continuous feedback between teachers and students (Rivoltella & Rossi, 2024). This shift requires a rethinking of the learning environment as a digitally integrated educational ecosystem (Jeladze, Pata & Quaicoe, 2017), and of feedback itself—not as a unidirectional teacher comment, but as a recursive, dialogic, and transformative process that actively involves students and becomes central to teacher-student interaction (Winstone & Carless, 2019).

In this context, we present a university teaching experience conducted with third-year students enrolled in the Primary Education program at the University of Macerata. A digitally integrated learning ecosystem (Laici, 2021) was designed and implemented to create multiple opportunities for feedback throughout the course, using various tools and channels. This ecosystem allowed the aggregation of resources to support active learning sessions and to facilitate formative feedback practices, moving beyond the traditional transmissive model of teaching and aligning instead with students' digital habits and mash-up culture.

Several feedback tools were integrated, including the One Minute Paper and Mentimeter, which supported real-time collection and sharing of student reflections and questions during lectures, fostering an ongoing dialogic feedback experience. A group design task was also carried out, combined with a peer feedback and peer review phase supported by the Ladder of Feedback protocol. Students were then engaged in a reflective activity on the feedback processes experienced during the course, guided by a semi-structured questionnaire.

The questionnaire included a section with Likert-scale items derived from the tool “Evaluating Your Beliefs about Feedback” developed by Winstone and Carless (2019, p.179). This instrument facilitated critical reflection on students’ beliefs about the importance and role of feedback in learning, helping them to make their positioning explicit in relation to the traditional or contemporary paradigms of feedback. The paper will present the results of this analysis, highlighting how students' perceptions evolve when feedback is embedded in a participatory, student-centred learning environment.

Keywords: Learning-Centred Feedback Paradigm, Peer Feedback, Higher Education, Digital Learning Ecosystem, Student Perceptions.