Will at Work Learning

FREE Research Report on Feedback

Call me crazy, but I think it's important to invest in the research base for our field. I've spent a good chunk of the last year reviewing research from the world's preeminent refereed journals in regard to how to give learners feedback. I've created, I'd like to think, the seminal research review on how to give learners feedback, written in a way that puts feedback in perspective, that goes deep into the fundamentals to give readers clear mental models for how feedback works. It's this kind of in-depth exploration that allows you as a learning professional to use your wisdom to make the difficult design tradeoffs that you have to make. Recipes are for short-order cooks. Research-based wisdom for learning professionals is much more useful in the gritty day-to-day of our learning shops.

And now, instead of selling this document, I'm going to try an experiment, and give it away. Call me crazy, but internet users (hey that's us) just don't like to pay. I've been swimming upstream against the movement toward free information, knowing that the information I'm compiling is the best information out there, and that it takes an incredibly exhaustive effort to sift through refereed research, make sense of it, and repackage it in a way that resonates and is practical. But maybe research karma will work. It's worth a try, right?

You can help me by reading the report, AND if you think it's good, sending the link to it to everyone you know in your organization, in every learning-development organization you know, to your mom, your kids, your elected officials, to Elliott Masie and Tony Bingham (CEO of ASTD), to the New York Times.

Special thanks go out to my friends at Questionmark who agreed in advance of me finishing the report to license it for their clients and learning community. Questionmark is providing a great service by making it possible to dessimate world-class research-based information that is both valid and useful, including their support of the aforementioned research report on feedback.

Here are some of the insights from the two-part 88-page research report:

1. The most important thing to remember about feedback is that it is generally beneficial for learners.
2. The second most important thing to remember about feedback is that it should be corrective. Typically, this means that feedback ought to specify what the correct answer is. When learners are still building understanding, however, this could also mean that learners might benefit from additional statements describing the “whys” and “wherefores.”
3. The third most important thing to remember about feedback is that it must be paid attention to in a manner that is conducive to learning.
4. Feedback works by correcting errors, whether those errors are detected or hidden.
5. Feedback works through two separate mechanisms: (a) supporting learners in correctly understanding concepts, and (b) supporting learners in retrieval.
6. To help learners build understanding, feedback should diagnose learners’ incorrect mental models and specifically correct those misconceptions, thereby enabling additional correct retrieval practice opportunities.
7. To prepare learners for future long-term retrieval and fluency, learners need practice in retrieving. For this purpose, retrieval practice is generally more important than feedback.
8. Elaborative feedback may be more beneficial as learners build understanding, whereas brief feedback may be more beneficial as learners practice retrieval.
9. Immediate feedback prevents subsequent confusion and limits the likelihood for continued inappropriate retrieval practice.
10. Delayed feedback creates a beneficial spacing effect.
11. When in doubt about the timing of feedback, you can (a) give immediate feedback and then a subsequent delayed retrieval opportunity, (b) delay feedback slightly, and/or (c) just be sure to give some kind of feedback.
12. Feedback should usually be provided before learners get another chance to retrieve incorrectly again.
13. Provide feedback on correct responses when:
    a. Learners experience difficulty in responding to questions or decisions.
    b. Learners respond correctly with less-than-high confidence.
    c. All the information learned is of critical importance.
    d. Learners are relatively new to the subject material.
    e. The concepts are very complex.
14. Provide feedback on incorrect responses:
    a. Almost always.
    b. Except:
    i. When feedback would disrupt the learning event.
    ii. When it would be better to wait to provide feedback.
15. When learners seek out and/or encounter relevant learning material either before or after feedback, this can modify the benefits of the feedback itself.
16. When learners are working to support retrieval or fluency, short-circuiting their retrieval practice attempts by enabling them to access feedback in advance of retrieval can seriously hurt their learning results.
17. When learners retrieve incorrectly and get subsequent well-designed feedback, they still have not retrieved successfully; so they need at least one additional opportunity to retrieve—preferably after a delay.
18. On-the-job support from managers, mentors, coaches, learning administrators, or performance-support tools can be considered a potentially powerful form of feedback.
19. Training follow-through software—that keeps track of learners’ implementation goals—provides another opportunity for feedback.
20. Feedback can affect future learning by focusing learners on certain aspects of learning material at the expense of other aspects of learning material. Learners may take the hint from the feedback to guide their attention in subsequent learning efforts.
21. Extra acknowledgements (when learners are correct) and extra handholding (when learners are wrong) are generally not effective (depending on the learners). In fact, when feedback encourages learners to think about how well they appear to be doing, future learning can suffer as learners aim to look good instead of working to build rich mental models of the learning concepts.

Some of the concepts and language in the above recommendations may not be obvious until you actually read the research report. You can do that by clicking the link below.

The link to download the feedback report

Research-to-Practice White Paper, Questioning Strategies for Audience Response Systems

Questioning Strategies for
Audience Response Systems:
How to Use Questions to Maximize
Learning, Engagement, and Satisfaction

by Dr. Will Thalheimer

Introduction

The buzz in the learning industry is focused on e-learning, m-learning, wikis, and blogs; but one of the most powerful learning technologies is being overlooked, probably because it's an in-the-classroom technology—audience response systems. In this research-to-practice white paper I offer a blueprint for how to use audience response systems to maximize higher-order learning in the classroom and beyond.

What One Reader Wrote to Me

Dr. Thalheimer,

Just wanted to drop you a little note this morning to express my gratitude for your paper "Questioning Strategies for Audience Response Systems: How to Use Questions to Maximize Learning, Engagement, and Satisfaction."

A friend recommended that I read it to prepare for a Higher Order Questioning staff development class that she and I are teaching together (in conjunction with some CPS [audience response] training we're offering). To tell you the truth, I really wasn't looking forward to reading it because I expected it to be dry and full of boring I'm-trying-to-sound-snobbily-intellectual writing, but I LOVED it. :)

I enjoyed your approachable style and dry sense of humor so much I read all the way through (including the endnotes!) and had many a good laugh along the way. In addition to being a blast to read, the paper challenged and inspired me to find new ways to push my questioning skills to a higher level for the next school year.

Thanks again, for the inspiration and for the great read. I'll be checking out your website later today and hope to find that equally enjoyable.

Sincerely,

Liz Walhof

Spanish Teacher
Colorado

From the Paper's Introduction

"Audience response systems have enormous potential for transforming lectures from dry recitals into rich jam sessions of deeply resonant learning. The technology is widely available, but the key to success is not in the technology; it’s in the instruction. To maximize meaningful learning, instructors must become adept in using questioning and discussion techniques. Unfortunately, some of us may come to believe that we can simply sprinkle our lectures with a few multiple-choice questions. This approach is emphatically inadequate, and is simply not worthy of our profession.

This report provides a near-exhaustive list of questioning strategies, and a comprehensive guide on using questions to facilitate classroom learning. No other resource exists that is research-based and comprehensive, while also being practical and useful. It has been designed specifically to provide practical guidance for trainers, teachers, and professors so that their learners—whether they are eight, forty-eight, or eighty years old—can experience deep and meaningful learning."

Special thanks to eInstruction for agreeing to license the paper for distribution to their clients. Such underwriting helps move the audience-response field forward and demonstrates an enlightened commitment to effective learning in classrooms of all types throughout the world. Other underwriting opportunities are available for research on audience-response learning. Contact Dr. Thalheimer with inquiries.

Additional Information

• Number of Pages: 124
• Number of Research Citations: 54
• Publication Date: March 2007
• Available to you Immediately as downloadable Electronic file (PDF).
• Purchasing utilizes industry-leading security.
• 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.
• Cost: $40.00 (US)

Click here to purchase...

Measuring Learning Results: The New Research-to-Practice White Paper

I've just completed a new research-to-practice white paper. As far as I can tell, it is the first work on learning measurement (assessment and evaluation) that actually takes human learning into consideration. I'd like to thank Questionmark for agreeing to support this work.

Words from the paper's introduction:

In writing this report on using fundamental learning research to inform assessment  design, I am combining two of my passions—learning and the measurement of learning. As an experienced learner and learning designer, I have come to the belief that those of us responsible for designing, developing, and delivering learning interventions are often left in the dark about our own successes and failures. The measurement techniques we use simply do not provide us with valid feedback about our own performances.

The traditional model of assessment utilizes end-of-learning assessments provided to learners in the context in which they learned. This model is seriously flawed, especially in failing to give us an idea of how well our learning interventions are doing in preparing our learners to retrieve information in future situations—the ultimate goal of training and education. By failing to measure our performance in this regard, we are missing opportunities to provide ourselves with valid feedback. We are also likely failing our institutions and our learners because we are not able to create a practice of continuous improvement to maximize our learning outcomes.

This report is designed to help you improve your assessments in this regard. I certainly won’t claim to have all the answers, nor do I think it is easy to create the perfect assessment, but I do believe very strongly that all of us can improve our assessments substantially, and by so doing improve the practice of education and training.

How to buy the paper:

• Click to go to my catalog
• Click to buy the paper directly

Fair-Assessment Quick-Audit

I'm a strong advocate for assessment. If we don't assess our learning interventions, (a) we as instructional designers don't learn ourselves, (b) we don't have valid data to give ourselves feedback, and (c) we can't possibly improve our learning designs.

If we're going to validly assess our learning interventions, we have to understand human learning and beware of biasing our results. Some of the things we have to watch out for:

1. Testing our learners only when information is top-of-mind.
2. Testing our learners in the learning context.
3. Testing our learners unfairly with biasing pretests.
4. Testing our learners with stupid, irrelevant questions.
5. Using Level 1 smile-sheet data exclusively.
6. Measuring with post-hoc metrics.

To help folks in the field avoid some of these pitfalls, I've developed the Fair-Assessment Quick-Audit courtesy of LearningAudit.com and Work-Learning Research.

Download The_Fair-Assessment_Quick-Audit.pdf

Some of these criteria are critical, especially because we in the field tend to do the exact opposite of what is fair and valid.

See this (click here) recent post that describes the mistakes we're making in assessment.

Learning Audits Discounted

Among the many changes on the horizon at Work-Learning Research, one of the most exciting for me is our new emphasis on learning audits. As the field moves more toward "evidence-based practices" and "evaluation-tested learning" more and more decision-makers are incorporating outside evaluations into their instructional-design repertoires.

Before we unveil our learning-audit offerings in their new finery, we'd like to offer viewers of this journal a 25% discount for all audits that are started and completed within this calendar year. This offer only lasts while we have capacity to perform the audits---as of today, we can schedule about 10 more audits through the end of the year.

Whether for your organization, or your clients' organizations, a learning audit might be just the thing to energize your instructional-design efforts, your e-learning efforts, your strategic organizational-learning initiatives.

Learning Audits aren't cheap, but the information they produce can be priceless.

If you want to look more closely at our old verbiage on audits, check out this link. Better yet, contact me directly to get started or just ask questions.