Feedback

Supporting self-improvement

Overview

What?

Feedback is information that flows back to learners about the quality of their ideas and behaviors. Learners can then use the feedback to make adjustments. Feedback appears in very many forms, for example, verbal corrections from others, noticing that your behaviors are not working, or a little voice in your head telling you that you just said the wrong thing.(ABC, 64)

• Informative feedback indicates a discrepancy between the current outcome and the desired goal, so learners can take steps to improve. (ABC, 64-65)

(ABC, 65)

Why?

Feedback improves learning at the individual, group, and institutional level. (ABC, 64). Feedback helps people make incremental adjustments. (ABC, 70)

The key task for the design of effective feedback is to enable learners to solve the assignment-of-credit problem. (ABC, 66)

How to use to support learning

• Specific
  • Good feedback helps learners locate the discrepancy between the desired goal and the actual outcome. (ABC, 67)
• Timely
  • Feedback needs to occur within a time frame that allows learners to figure out which event led to the error. (ABC, 68)
• Understandable
  • In order to comprehend feedback without supervision, learners need a recognizable standard of performance and a way to detect whether they have achieved it. (ABC, 68-69)
• Nonthreatening
  • Have students work in teams to report a group answer; thus students will not feel personally threatened by negative feedback. (ABC, 69)
• Revisable
  • Find out a way to foreshadow a trajectory of growth that depends on revision, such as a roadmap that shows students improvement over time. (ABC, 70)

Pitfalls to avoid

• Learners often interpret feedback with an ego focus rather than a task focus. It is important for educators to keep learners' eyes on the task and not on their ego. One way to do this is to ensure the feedback is directed at the task or behavior and not at people themselves. (ABC, 73)
• Provide a way for students to view negative feedback as an opportunity for growth. (ABC, 73)
• Another pitfall is that learners may not have sufficient knowledge to detect and interpret the feedback.

Implication

Learner Context

• The sweet spot for feedback depends on the learner’s https://egia.slab.com/posts/knowledge-d4bcaae6#what . Very knowledgeable learners completing a familiar task may need only right/wrong feedback. For novices, the sweet spot resides between discrepancy and elaborative feedback. (ABC, 66)
• The choice of whether to add an explanation to discrepancy feedback depends on how disruptive the explanation will be. (ABC, 66)

Goals

Feedback helps learners better understand the educational goals and tells them how far they’re from the goals. (in-class, 10/23 above)

Good feedback helps learners locate the discrepancy between the desired goal and the actual outcome. (ABC, 67)

Assessment

• Two effective ways of feedback (ABC, 68-69):
  • Supervision feedback: another person (or computer) gives feedback to learners.
  • Self-led feedback: learners use a recognizable standard of performance and a way to detect whether they have achieved it.
• Ensure the feedback is directed at the task or behavior and not at the people themselves. Provide a way for students to view feedback as an opportunity to growth. (ABC, 73)
• Provide not only feedback on specific contents, but also suggestions on how to improve from a strategic level. (in-class, 10/23)

• Vary assessment styles. Use peer-feedback or self-evaluation for more subjective criteria (in-class, 11/29).

• Grading should be seen as a way of communicating with students, not as a means of ranking them (Bain, ch. 7)

Instruction

The key task for the design of effective feedback is to enable learners to solve the assignment-of-credit problem. The assignment-of-credit problem involves identifying the specific condition, behavior, or idea that eventually led to the undesirable outcome. (ABC, 67)

Feedback needs to occur within a time frame that allows learners to figure out which event led to the error. When students take a test, it is useful to deliver feedback while they can still remember how they solved the problems. Otherwise, they will not be able to remember which of their thoughts was responsible for the error. (ABC, 68)

Feedback that is specific, timely, understandable, and nonthreatening can help students solve the assignment-of-credit problem.(ABC, 67)

Have students work in teams to report a group answer; thus, students will not feel personally threatened by negative feedback. It also helps to create a supportive, non threatening environment. (ABC, 69)

Examples

Child answers: 3 x 2 = 5

The amount of information you provide will likely depend on the expertise of the student.

Low-information feedback: “That’s incorrect.” This type of feedback is appropriate for knowledgeable students, who just need a small nudge to self- correct.

Medium-information feedback: “Five is too small. Three groups of two are six.” This is better for people who need a little more support.

High-information feedback: “Five is too small. Perhaps you were adding the numbers together. Multiplying 3 x 2 means taking 3 groups of 2 [demonstrating a strategy for solving the problem].” This level of information is great for beginners, where it may be helpful to complement feedback with further instruction.

Special Topic: Application in Online Courses

• Research shows instant/timely feedback can causes large growths in learning.
• Successful feedback should include detailed explanation and encouragement. It should also be tailored to students' understanding levels.
• However, for an online course where there might be lots of students enrolled, if the assignment is hard to grade (like a long essay), it will increase the instructors burden a lot. Under this circumstance, consider introducing peer feedback.
• Peer feedback gives students invaluable opportunities to see their own works from multiple perspectives and learn from others' work. It's important to ensure the quality of peer feedback, instructors could use simple, carefully-designed rubrics to scaffold feedback and gradings accurately.
• Instructors may use automatic feedback to an appropriate extent, but the customized feedback should never be compromised.
• Provide opportunities for peer feedback.(in-class, 11/29, above)

Further Reading:

• Kluger, Avraham & DeNisi, Angelo. (1996). The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Performance: A Historical Review, a Meta-Analysis, and a Preliminary Feedback Intervention Theory. Psychological Bulletin. 119. 254-284. 10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.254.

Figures from article:

some feedback is better than others, some is not helpful (mainly discouraging feedback or verbal feedback on physical tasks).

Above Normative feedback is one that clarifies the norms of a task. Velocity feedback informs the student how a new strategy or trial performed relative to a previous one. Corrective feedback is on the 'correctness' or appropriateness of a particular performance.

• Paunesku, David & Walton, Gregory & Romero, Carissa & Smith, Eric & Yeager, David & S Dweck, Carol. (2015). Mindset interventions are a scalable treatment for academic underachievement. Psychological science. 26. 10.1177/0956797615571017.

References

• XWiki
• XWiki Extensions