I was rereading a short section of my course book, Psychology of Learning for Instruction by Marcy P. Driscoll last night. This line jumped out at me:
“Motivation is a work-related rather than a play-related concept” Weiner as quoted by Driscoll (1990)
Now granted that Irving B. Weimer published this more then 2o years ago, it’s not hard to find examples of people looking at motivation in the context of play or gaming to better understand it’s effects on people. A good example of this was presented on Jeff Tang’s blog. In his recent post, Jeff reviewed Tom Chatfield‘s TED Talk on motivation in gaming. Much as it may have been explored previously, motivation now is regarded as a play-related concept.
From Tom’s talk, I found these ideas particularly interesting:
- when ambition is satisfied, motivation occurs
- when a person’s wanting and liking is satisfied, they are engaged
- rapid and frequent feedback is essential to learning
It’s Tom’s last point that I want to explore further in this blog post. When I performed a simple and a more advanced google search on rapid and frequent feedback, most of my hits were pertaining to gaming. Although educators are firm believers in the importance of timely (and often relevant) feedback, the field of gaming seem, at least at first, to be working extensively on this idea and exploring it’s implications.
Feedback loops, as described by Anne Davies, are crucial in ensuring a learner’s success and can amplify the quality of learning that takes place. Although, I may have missed with the specific wording, this is something that has been repeated in my system pd sessions for quite some time and in my local school when teacher are engaging in professional conversations. I have never had any problems or experiences that would cause me to refute such views on the importance and effects on learning. In an attempt to find out more about the specific impacts of feedback, I looked further into some research. I found this article by Richard A Schmidt. His article shares his research on frequent augmented feedback on the effect on learning.
From his research, Schmidt has found that:- frequent feedback benefits performance during the acquisition stage when feedback is present and is detrimental to retention
- less frequent feedback benefits both the performance in later practice and long term retention
- frequent feedback is detrimental to learning
Now after reading this article, I was left a little baffled. How is it that everyone can be emphasizing the importance of timely, high quality feedback and that this research could be saying the opposite. Essentially, with feedback, there are two contrary views as to the importance and the impact on learning. At no point do I think that Schmidt was proposing offering very little or no feedback but rather was quantifying the direct results on acquisition and retention. Some of you who have been reading my blog for a while will know that I am more interested in long term results, not short term and that the retention of learning is especially interesting to me.
Later in his article, Schmidt gives some reasons why he thinks feedback has a degrading effect on learning. He hypothesizes that:
- the feedback is only available during the acquisition stage and not on the retention test which creates a dichotomy in performance contexts for learners, or they learn with feedback but are required to perform without it
- learners begin to develop a dependance on feedback
- feedback may block important information processing activities during the acquisition stage
- too many corrections creates a failure in the learner to produce stable consistent behaviour
All this being said, these hypotheses and findings from research go directly against what Tom Chatfield’s TED talk and also against popular (and educational) belief about the impact and importance of feedback. In my professional practice, I have especially found student/teacher work conferences to be of the utmost value. During these, I review student progress and have conversation with them about the successes and difficulties, and try and set specific goals that are near and attainable. I never really liked getting products at an end point without having an opportunity to review the work at least once with the student because the feedback on the work was almost irrelevant. They focused on the grade and disregarded the feedback. Furthermore, there are often helpful suggestions that can be made to improve the process or the product prior to completion. When it’s possible, I like to go through this process several times with students during an inquiry cycle or project.
All this being said, after this brief exploration, I am left wondering what the future of education might be in regards to feedback. If education begins to adopt a gaming reality, much as Tom Chatfield suggests it could and should, would a status bar (to motivate progress and perseverance) and immediate feedback truly support student learning outcomes? At this point I am skeptical but do realize that if it comes to be expected because of it’s preeminence in gaming, it could easily make it’s way into education. The more I think about Schmidt’s ideas, the more I think he may be right when he says that students could begin to rely on the feedback at the stage of acquisition and be unable to perform during the evaluation stage. (Disclaimer: I am not a big proponent of the use of tests to measure what students know and don’t know. From other blog posts, you will see that I am much more interested in having students demonstrate knowledge and skills on real-life problems)
So to start a conversation, where, when, and how do you offer feedback? From your practice, who do you think is most accurate about the reality of feedback on learning?
Here I am responding to your post as soon as I can get at it, so you probably surmise that I offer this as part of a feedback loop. But my reason isn’t to assess how you’re doing, and give you evaluative feedback. On the contrary, I do it so you will know somebody is reading and thinking about your work — and finding value in it.
I don’t think the Schmidt and Chatfield positions are diametrically opposed. I think it depends on what purpose your feedback is serving. If it is providing useful information or support, that is quite different from rewards that prod learners extrinsically to keep working.
I would worry about feedback that takes the ownership of the learning away from the learner by getting them to concentrate on the rewards rather than the learning. Ultimately, we hope that learners become sophisticated about being able to assess their own learning and derive feedback for themselves.
But of course, that doesn’t happen easily or quickly.
Thank you for your comment and thoughts, Rick!
Your thoughts about purpose are valid and do frame intended consequences of actions regarding feedback in an interesting manner. I wonder if learners (or any person) can differentiate between what is intended and what is perceived regarding feedback. What I mean here is, in the the end, there are a number of possible outcomes from receiving feedback. A learner can refute, accept, partially hear/accept, disregard (among other possibilities) feedback. Depending on the internal state of the receiver (and the sender) the signs will be interpreted and assimilated differently depending on many effects and influences. Ultimately, I think what is most important is the impact on learning that feedback has. I found Schmidt’s findings interesting because they explain the opposite of what we would expect. Much like Daniel Pink’s TED talk about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, we seem to have deep rooted beliefs, that depending on the context, do not always appear to be accurate.
Rick, I really liked your comment about feedback that draws attention away from the learning and redirects it towards the “reward”. In my previous post about the role of failure in learning, I shared a possible model for students to engage in reflective process through journaling. Maybe this context would allow students to generate meaningful self-generated feedback about their experiences and abilities?
After reading your comment about learner sophistication, I wonder what would be the outcome if more learners were able to accurately assess their own learning? Also, is there space for this type of assessment or do we depend on authorities to provide this feedback and the overall value?
Good questions, Paul. I know a lot of teachers who are doing their level best to help students become self-directed, and develop the personal skills and attitudes necessary to analyse their own learning and grow from it. Of course, this kind of thing requires some maturity.
By the way, you’ve pointed out the dissonance you discovered in the Schmidt and Pink work, and how it got you to reconsider things you had believed. That’s very consistent with some feedback research that suggests that the most powerful feedback is that which violates our expectations. If we think we did well, and find out we didn’t; or if we think we did badly but get feedback that shows us we did well — the feedback we receive makes a strong impression.
Interesting, isn’t it?
Paul –
I also had a chance to attend an Anne Davies conference and hear her thoughts on feedback. I like her idea that feeback has to be meaningful for the learner. It makes me think of the traditional approach to writing where a student would hand in a rough draft and the teacher would indicate the needed corrections. Not very effective feedback! Now, I see teachers pointing out one or two areas that need correcting, then conducting a quick mini-lesson with the student, and finally, asking the students to go and find those particular types of errors on their own. This is a much more time consuming way to address mechanical errors in writing, but I think, more effective than the traditional method.
Anne also compares marks-only feedback, comments-only feedback and a combination of marks and comments. Research in this area shows that students receiving comments only showed the greatest learning gains. This is interesting because I think we are still a very marks-oriented society – just listening to students and parents at report card time leads me to believe that marks are still highly valued.
Imagine if Rick only posted a number in the comment section instead of responding … what learning would take place then?!
Hi Paul,
I appreciate that you found both sides of the story here, but I have to dig my heels into the ‘feedback is good’ camp.
If you read my last post on my Independent Music Project, the one thing that I left out was that we did a ‘dress rehearsal’ before the class which was when I gave meaningful written feedback to each student/group.
One thing that is critical about the feedback is that feedback needs to be given in the context of the child and the situation. I’m going to relate to personal experience here. If I had a student who played a Beethoven Sonata on the piano for me I could give feedback on changing finger patterns, sustain pedal techniques, etc. If a different student was in year 1 and playing ‘Hot Cross Buns’, I might make a comment about a wrong note, or rhythm problems. So the key to meaningful feedback is knowing – knowing your students, their background, their level, and where they’re coming from.
Just my two cents. Great post! I enjoyed reading/thinking!
Jade,
I agree with both you and Anne Davies that feedback must have relevance to the learner. Was it Marcy Driscoll who stated that students will find peer feedback more relevant then teacher or adult feedback? If it was Driscoll, and I may have mistaken the source, the closer the the connection between the sender and receiver, the more likely the feedback will be seen as valuable and will be acted upon. This is not to say that feedback from a teacher is irrelevant to learners but we can amplify the feedback loops (Davies) if we take a look at creating authentic audience for students. An easy example for such a successful context would be students using a blog to publish their work to a world audience. I would also encourage teachers and students to move beyond text only blogs so that students can further develop their literacy skills using multimedia to convey meaning and to demonstrate learning to others.
I think there is much need for alignment in practice in regards to the use of feedback as you have described it. I was the language arts teacher in two classrooms last year and with the other two teachers, we devised a method to report feedback to students and to go through the writing process in a second language. Some students were fine to go and review their work and to adjust it to reflect the new learning or skill that students had developed in the student-teacher conference. Others did nothing with the feedback. Once a piece of work was reviewed once, a few students made minimal changes to the work but by and large, it remained unchanged. As a group we thought this may be an issue that would be eliminated if students were going through this process for a period of time and it became part of a process. My two colleagues and I would agree that it took longer in some respects but we also chunked students into groups for the conferences when we reviewed or explained things pertinent to their piece of writing or their process. This saved time and then create a small network for the students to draw on when reviewing their work. This worked quite well and eliminated much need to repeat minor missed details. In learning a second language at the beginner stage, the peer feedback was often spotty because they had such a limited knowledge of the language. Peer feedback was only used later in the third term when a stronger language base was acquired.
Jade, to support your grades comment, Samantha recently looked at his topic on her blog. You and others should check out her thoughts and ideas here.
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the read and the comment! I am by no means strictly of one belief in regards to feedback. As Rick pointed out, I must have had a bout of dissonance when I read something quite contrary to what I have always been told and professionally practiced.
I agree with you that feedback has to be relevant to learners, and I would add timely. It is easy to exceed cognitive load when giving feedback much as your example demonstrates and the purpose of giving feedback is to encourage growth or change. The reason I bring up the timeliness of feedback is because of the reality of the time-serve model. Things are only relevant to students and people as a whole for a short period of time. From my experience, the pace and intensity of learning and life often requires myself and others to apply energy to different things at different moments. Because of a lack of progression or overlap, if feedback isn’t timely, it loses relevance because attention and focus has been shifted elsewhere and the mind is preoccupied with something different. I have seen someone else make a comment about Dr. Lee Jenkins and his message of alignment so that students are building on past learning, reworking it, reviewing, and further extending their knowledge and skills from unit to unit, grade to grade, year to year, program to program etc. I love this idea! I think ideally this is what we think happens but in reality, things are quite different…