Feedback is Essential - for Everything

If you are around my age, you might remember getting assigned all of the odd problems in a math book.  Why odd?  Because, in the appendix, you would find the answers to the odd problems.  Not the solutions, mind you, just the final answers.  

And, that was better than nothing, but if you got the problem wrong, it didn't really help you much with knowing what you did wrong or how to do it better in the future.  It wasn't really feedback.

Since feedback is valuable, we should define it.  Like a lot of educational terms, it sort of depends on who you ask.  Let's look at a few.

• "Feedback is a game plan for getting better.” - Todd Zakrajsek, book The New Science of Learning,
• "Feedback answers the questions Where am I going? How am I going? What do I do next?" - John Hattie and Helen Timperley, article “The Power of Feedback,” in the Review of Educational Research
• "Feedback and adjustment means additional tries increase accuracy.” - Kevin Washburn, Uprise

There are other definitions, but they all have one thing in common: Feedback isn't just telling you what you did wrong. It's tell you how to improve.

Feedback is cyclical and builds into a whole that is greater than the sum its parts. Think about feedback from a microphone and speaker that are improperly positioned. Sound coming out of a speaker enters the microphone, comes out of a speaker combined with additional sounds, and goes back into the microphone again. That combination produces the awful sound we have all heard in a conference, concert, or church service. In education, we should get a more pleasant result, but the effect is still a combination of input and output building on each other for a different result.

Think about non-academic forms of learning - sports, weightlifting, doing chores, trade jobs, etc. A basketball coach explicitly teaches his players how to properly shoot a free throw, assesses their performance while they practice it multiple times, and provides feedback for improvement.  Personal trainers show their client proper squat form or how to execute an effective hammer curl and then stand by and provide feedback while they do it.  An apprentice mechanic is carefully taught and monitored by a mentor who provides feedback along the way, so he doesn't destroy someone's car.  Students of cosmetology are first taught principles and then practice on wigs with detailed feedback before being allowed to apply a pair of scissors to the hair of a human client; and even then, they are closely watched by an instructor and provided with feedback throughout the process. 

Teachers, this means "grading" homework. I don't mean it has to actually have a score in the gradebook, but it means they can't just get credit for doing it. You may not be able to do that with every problem, so you might need to select a couple of critical ones from each assignment. It might mean providing the key and allowing them to check it themselves or going over it in a full class. It will mean doing more than putting a line through a wrong answer on a quiz. That may look different for you than it does for me, but it has to be more than "this is wrong;" it must include a way to be right in the future.

I can hear you saying, "But that takes a lot of time." Yes, it does. And I know the pressures of trying to fit everything in by the end of the year. But the heart of teaching is student learning and improvement, so it is worth eliminating something else to fit in proper feedback. After all, it doesn't matter how much of the curriculum you "cover" if they aren't getting what you are covering. We all have something we could probably leave out if we have to. Effective feedback is worth making that decision for.

If you want to know more about doing feedback well, this website has some good advice.

You may not be a school teacher, but if you are teaching anyone anything, take the time to give feedback to show them how to improve.

Feedback - Part 2 - Harder Than Ever

This week, I was walking from lunch duty to my classroom behind two 8th grade girls.  I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I was only a couple of feet behind them while they talked about a test they had just gotten.  "I got a 94," one of them said.  "I wish I knew what I missed.  We never get things back anymore, so I don't know what I got wrong."  

Last week, I talked about the importance of feedback in helping students learn.  This week, let's address how much more difficult it is to do digitally for some things.  

If the assignment is very short, you can make a comment on your LMS or reply to an email relatively quickly.  If it is answers to a multiple choice test, it is likely the online system you are using has the option of showing them what they got wrong and what the right answer was (That's not really the same as feedback, but it gives them something).  

The problem comes from trying to give feedback on complex or partially subjective things.  Where I used to be able to write in the margin of a NASA essay, that is hard to manage if the student is joining virtually.  At the time of that essay, I only had three 8th grade students that were fully virtual, so I still did it that way, then scanned their essays, and emailed them.  That wouldn't have been feasible with more virtual students because it was rather time consuming, but it worked for those three at that time.  Where I have had the most trouble has been on the free response questions of tests.  For the multiple choice part, GoFormative has done it for me by giving me the right answer and allowing me to comment on each individual question.  For more complex free response questions, I have asked kids to make FlipGrid videos for their answers.  While I can give feedback directly in there as well, it is awkward for mathematical processes in a way that writing directly next to the problem area was not.  I also know that, while students need feedback, they don't like reading it.  Having it in two separate places means they have to work to find it, which the girl in the hallways is likely to do, but those with less motivation are not.  

I haven't solved this problem.  I've tried it in a few ways (email, grade explanation sheet sent to them, LMS comments) during this crazy year, but I feel like I haven't given truly high quality feedback all year.  It's important enough to keep looking for a good way, but I haven't found it yet.  

Feedback- Part 1 - "I've Got You"

In all of John Almarode's presentations, he talks about feedback.  No matter what else he has talked about, he says, "All of this is meaningless without feedback."  He also makes the points that feedback is about helping a student to improve.  In his Almarodian way (I'm coining that right now), he says, "Feedback should not be, 'I've Gotcha.'  It should be 'I've got you.'"

Each year, I spend a ton of time giving feedback to my 8th-grade students, and I try hard to keep this idea in mind (not that I ever had a gotcha mentality before, but I am trying harder to be really intentional about keeping feedback focused on making the product better).  The opportunity to practice this most comes from the NASA paper that I've written about before. (Actually, when I wrote about it before, it was the Mars Paper.  Sometime, I should write about that change.  Keep an eye out.)

Here's the gist of the assignment.  Students are told to inhabit the role of a NASA administrator and determine the top three priorities that NASA should invest in.  They are given time to explore the NASA website to see what they are already doing, and our media specialist comes into the classroom twice, to talk about good research and to talk about proper citations. 

The first thing that was due was their thesis.  Now, remember, they are in 8th grade, so I am not expecting super-sophisticated and nuanced writing.  I'm fine with it if they want to fill in a sort of formulaic "NASA should invest in ________, ___________, and __________."  I had them send them to me in email so that feedback could be returned as quickly as possible. 

The majority of the feedback fell into three categories:
- not reading the instructions
- choosing a priority that is impossible to support (using black holes as garbage dumps)
- missing the point of the assignment

How I give feedback is determined by the error itself.  A student who has not read the instructions is going to get different feedback than the student who is just misunderstanding them.  

- Quote the instructions - Those who have not followed the instructions will get a reply that quotes the rubric and refers them back to it.  I word it politely, but it usually says something like, "Remember, you were asked to . . . "

- Ask them to think closer to the box - Don't get me wrong; I like creative thinking.  There are, however, ideas that are too out there to find support.  Their feedback usually sounds something like, "Points one and three are fine.  Do you think you will find an expert who says the same thing you are saying to support point two?  If not, you might want to choose something more doable."  

- Giving my own example - I struggle with this one because I have found that students just put what I said, and I don't want to do their thinking for them.  

Feedback takes time, but it is time well invested.  This year, I got better papers on the whole than I have gotten in most years.  I wish it were possible to give thorough feedback on every assignment.  It isn't.  The complexities of the pandemic have made strong feedback more difficult (more on that next week).  It requires a lot of work in a time when we are exhausted.  But it matters.  It matters more than the grade because it builds your relationship with the students.  Start increasing it on the big things as you can, and keep in mind that you are communicated "I've got you."