I can vividly recall the bane of my elementary school education – the dreaded math homework. The teacher would give us a list of problems to do in the book and we would all go home, dreading the hours of work we would eventually have to do. I did everything I could to put it off. Most of the time, I would quickly finish my problems in the morning, or scribble down the answers in the 10 minutes before class started. Had my elementary school done what I’m about to present here, I imagine that learning math would have been a lot more effortless and fun back in the day.
The critical component lacking from all of that math homework was feedback. Feedback is simply an indication, from some external source, to indicate to the learner how he or she is doing. As educators, we are capable of originating feedback and giving it to our students. Feedback is not just a tool in our teaching arsenal – it is the cornerstone of learning. Without feedback, the learner has no way of knowing whether the responses they are generating to questions and problems are correct. Without this information it is virtually impossible for a person to gain the knowledge necessary to reliably solve a problem and frustration sets in.
A lot of educators approach learning by throwing information at students and seeing what sticks. The problem is, if you just present people with information, they become familiar with the concepts but they are unable to do anything with it. For example, you might show a student how to do a problem, but until they do it themselves they will never become skilled at solving that problem. The entire goal of learning is for the learner to gain the ability herself. Given accurate feedback, we are able to master difficult concepts quickly and with little struggle.
Oftentimes, we are not highly-aware of the feedback process, but integrating principles of feedback that psychologists have been developing over the last 100 years, we are able to state a few basic principles:
The 3 Principles of Powerful Feedback
- Good Feedback Is Constructive. Rather than telling the person what is wrong, it tells them what is right. If you tell somebody that what they’re doing isn’t what you’re looking for, the person will have no idea what you want! A common approach to doing this with longer feedback is the sandwich technique – say something positive, make a suggestion/criticism, then say something positive.
- Good Feedback Is Immediate. Psychological studies have shown that the longer the interval between a behavior and a consequence, the more difficult it is to make a connection between the two. (Banks use this knowledge to their advantage when they issue credit cards.) When it comes to teaching, providing students with the fastest possible feedback is one of the most effective techniques you can use to create a powerful learning experience. The longer you wait to give feedback, the more likely students are to forget what they just did. Whenever I grade papers, I always send out an email to the class giving blanket feedback the moment I’m done grading. Because they think about the paper in the interval before they get their actual paper back, they form a stronger connection between what they did and why they got the feedback they got.
- Good Feedback Is Detailed. It informs the person about how their behavior and thought processes are functioning. Good feedback makes the person more aware of how they are thinking, which in turn allows the person greater control over the way they think. When I was TAing statistics, I would always ask my students, “How did you arrive at this particular answer?” If they just scribbled something down, that question forced them to actually think about it. When students start thinking, they become much more powerful learners.
Increasing the Volume of Feedback
It’s a very case that a teacher provides too much feedback. On the contrary, I generally find that too little feedback occurs in the educational environment. Here are some tips to increase the amount of feedback you get in the hands of your students:
- Use peer instruction.
- Give “blanket” feedback. Any time you feel that an important point is being missed, get inside the head of the average student in the class, and ask yourself, “What is this student thinking that is leading them to give the wrong answer?” I often find that pre-conceived notions about how things work interfere with the ability to learn a new and more sophisticated way of thinking. By interacting with a sample of students, you can usually figure out what these flawed thought processes are an address them directly.
Giving Feedback Can Be Tough Sometimes
When it comes to course work that involves difficult problem-solving (i.e. classes involving math, programming, and logic), many students come into the situation with a pessimistic outlook. Whether or not the course is difficult, some students have had so many frustrating experiences with similar classes in the past that they’re unable to have an optimistic “can-do” attitude. In courses like this, it is extremely common for students to have a high failure rate, which only compounds the difficulty by adding extra pressure to succeed. The end result can be a high level of anxiety.
Because these classes are difficult, making mistakes on assignments is simply a fact of life. As teaching assistants, we are required to not only convey course content, but also provide feedback on assignments that are typically riddled with incorrect answers and work. This creates a dilemma for the TA, which can sometimes lead to an inner dialogue that goes something like the following:
TheRealist: I want my students to succeed. So I had better be honest and up-front with them about the fact that they’re not doing well. I should just tell them how badly they’re doing on the assignments, and tell them that they’re wrong when they get something wrong.
TheIdealist: You can’t do that! When you tell students that they’re wrong, they freak out, shut down, and stop participating. I don’t want a motivated student to become discouraged just because I told him he was wrong.
TheRealist: Okay smarty-pants, how am I supposed to give students accurate feedback without telling them they’re wrong?
TheIdealist: You should say, “Maaaaybeeeee you should…um….maybe….sort of….yeah…ummmm…let’s look at that problem again.”
TheRealist: That sounds extremely inefficient. I want to be able to give my students direct feedback so there’s no confusion. I want them to learn.
TheIdealist: Well, I don’t want my students becoming demoralized….screw you TheRealist.
TheRealist: You’re a wuss…screw you TheIdealist.
Managing Frustration When Giving Difficult Feedback
I taught one statistics class in the psychology major, and my job was to run a 3-hour discussion section in which the students completed a 10-page packet of statistical problem by hand. YIKES! Psychology majors are NOT known for their skill at doing math, yet I got my highest TA evaluation in that class. Let me break down the method I used. If you’ve got any suggestions to improve or change this method, I would be glad to hear them in the comments:
- I asked students to raise their hand if they got stuck or were having any kind of problem getting to the answer they thought was correct. They could literally ask me anything they wanted to.
- I NEVER gave them the correct answer – if you give a student the answer, they won’t do the work themselves. I told them, “Your answer is not correct,” and I stuck around to see if they wanted to ask me anything else. Usually they would want to see if the stuff that preceded that answer was done correctly.
- “Let’s take a look at your work” was always the next step.
- We would usually get to a point where there would be some kind of error that involved miscalculation, using the wrong equation, miscopying something, etc. etc. I would say, “Your work is not correct here” but I would tell them what the error was. I would have them look at it closely. I made sure that if they were still having trouble, they could continue to ask me questions.
- If they wanted me to tell them, I would usually encourage them to do itself themselves by directing them to the correct procedure. Things like, “Where could you go to find out the correct procedure? How can you tell if this is the right equation to use or not?” I want them thinking, thinking, and thinking some more.
- If all else fails, point at the solution to the problem but still don’t give them the answer – let them state the solution themselves.
- Always frame your discussion in terms of behaviors and outcomes, never in terms of “wrong/right.” For example, “If you try to solve the problem this way, a classic problem arises.”
I found that, using this method, students learned a lot and were highly satisfied with how much they learned. They never directed any hostility toward me because I was there to help them. And I was helping them in a REAL way, not just feeding them answers. Overall, my students commented that they learned a lot and appreciated the help.
If you have any feedback techniques you’d like to share, post them in the comments below.
