Feedback During Learning to Enhance Student Outcomes

Learning is a complex task that involves many moving pieces. My earlier posts talked about the working memory and cognitive load restraints of students, and how to minimize over stimulating students for better learning. I also spoke about the importance of maintaining student attention during lessons to ensure students are processing the content during class. Both of these posts talked about what happens during direct instruction.

So what happens next? Well, usually there is some task students need to complete to apply their newly learned knowledge. A huge part of creating a lesson is designing the practice material to be effective and conducive to applying their learning. And there is a lot consideration that needs to go into it.

But beyond the actual questions on the page and scaffolding practice aside, how do we create effective practice where students are succeeding in practicing a skill? How do we build student confidence that they are learning the material? How do we let students know they are doing the practice correctly? Today, I want to answer these questions through understanding the importance of feedback.

Feedback During Practice

Feedback is when students receive an evaluation of their performance. The most common feedback is a students grade; it reflects how they have done on assignments, the effort they put into class, and the amount of assignments they have submitted. There are other indicators of feedback beyond grades such as behavior feedback for how students are doing in class, or social feedback on how students work with others.

It can also be presented in a variety of ways and scales. For instance, grades use an A to F system to evaluate performance. But you can also give feedback through smaller indications such as a thumbs up to a student during practice, or giving them a quick correction during class on their assignment. As teachers, we are constantly giving feedback to students to adjust their performance.

When it comes to learning, this feedback cycle is a continuous loop in the learning continuation.

Students practice, they get feedback on their work, they correct themselves, then they practice again. Once they are able to become fluent and understand the material, then they can work their way towards mastery. But many times, teachers can make the mistake of not providing the feedback students need during class.

Teacher Mistakes of Feedback

Giving consistent and quick feedback to students is very hard. When you have 25 students in a class and are teaching a new topic for the first time, there can be a lot of students who have questions or need help. We can not give all students 1 on 1 time during class, because then we neglect all of the other students. Students also need feedback in a timely manner during practice. Waiting until the next day to give a student feedback on their practice they did during class can mean they practiced incorrectly the entire class period. Or worse, you lose a day of learning because students are confused and you are unable to consult all of their questions about the content.

And with the work load teachers manage, this is a consistent reality. We are grading, dealing with student behaviors and emotions, and constantly planning weeks and months ahead in order to meet those school goals of growth. And while we know of techniques of TLAC such as aggressive monitoring to provide student feedback, this can be extremely tiring and inefficient with a larger class.

Adding Quick and Consistent Feedback in Lessons

Having quick feedback during the practice portion of the lesson is important. It allows students to know how they are performing and allows us to work with our lower students and help them understand the material. The absolute best way to do this is having your practice through technology that checks and explains student work. For instance, I use Delta Math in my Algebra class where it tells students if they got the right answers after each question. Furthermore, it will give them an in-depth explanation worked out of how to solve the problem.

This provides students with the opportunity to see how they did, check their work, find mistakes, and then adjust their learning to get towards the correct answer, Students are not just blindly answering questions and then turning in their work sheet. They know that every question matters and has a weight on getting it correct.

Feedback is Motivation

As an added bonus, getting feedback can be motivational for students. When students feel achievement within a topic it encourages them to continue practicing and learning. Therefore, if students are getting problems correct they are enhancing their confidence and ability to do more problems and know the material.

Finding a Consistent Feedback Tool That Works for You

Having a tool that provides students consistent feedback can be challenging. I used to do a ton of aggressive monitoring where I would mark students papers correct or not so that they could check their work as they went through. However, it was tedious and tiring. Furthermore, I would get stuck with a single student as they would keep inquiring why they got it wrong and I would have to examine the work that they did.

Therefore, I highly recommend utilizing technology if you have it available. Using websites that show students the answers with immediate feedback after they complete a problem eliminates constant questions from students if they got the answer right, and provides you more time to work with the students that need the most help. In math class I use DeltaMath and it provides instant feedback and worked examples for students. I use the premium version as well that shows them a step by step video if they choose to use it.

If you do not have access to technology and are more of a pencil to paper school, using an answer key and distributing it during practice can help. In this case, I would tell students that you are not grading the work and that it is for practice (or frame it in some way that the benefit of this is practice rather than copying down answers).

I hope this insight sparks a new way to beef up your in class practice. Let me know how you incorporate a feedback loop into your practice for students via my email.