“At its best, feedback is a powerful tool, stimulating honest self-reflection, insight and improvement. At its worst, it’s the reason your colleague wound up crying in the bathroom.” – Women’s Professional Network
Although we don’t realize it, feedback is a constant part of our communication:
- “I’m doing well, thank you for asking.”
- “The meeting didn’t go as well as I expected.”
- “I would like an iced coffee, please.”
The list is endless. It’s strange, then, that although feedback makes up a major part of our conversations, many of us find it hard to give.
In e-learning, effective feedback can be a win-win situation for instructors and learners. The operative word is “effective.” It’s especially tricky in e-learning, since knowledge, assessments and feedback are all provided asynchronously. Fortunately, there is a right and a wrong way to provide e-learning feedback, and when done the right way, it naturally becomes effective.
1. Begin with an understanding of what feedback is and what it is meant to do.
Put simply, feedback is a reaction or response to an action or behavior that helps someone know how they performed or how they did.
To make best use of feedback, it’s necessary to understand its scope in e-learning. Feedback has multiple roles and is a goldmine of information that can be used for several purposes:
- To reinforce learning
- To justify the basis of learners’ assessment scores
- To help learners develop the capability to evaluate their own learning
2. Keep in mind that feedback is not criticism. Criticism is negative.
The following facts about negative criticism are backed by psychological studies and demonstrate that nothing good can come of it.
- The human brain perceives negativity as a threat to its survival.
- Negativity is remembered longer and in far more detail than positivity.
- Negative feedback is often misinterpreted.
- We are quick to accept praise and give all credit to our capabilities (e.g., “I worked very hard on this project”) but find it hard to believe that we can be wrong or make mistakes.
3. Adopt corrective feedback as a strategy.
Corrective feedback, unlike negative feedback, includes correctional strategies and suggestions for new and better ways to do something. The good news is that employees prefer corrective feedback to praise and recognition. In a survey of 899 individuals, 57 percent said they would prefer corrective feedback, while only 43 percent said they would prefer praise. When asked which type of feedback would have the most impact on their career, 72 percent chose corrective feedback. It is, indeed, a very effective evaluation strategy.
4. Give feedback immediately to reinforce learning on a specific point.
Include a brief explanation of why an answer is right or wrong to give learners a deeper understanding of the topic. If they make an educated guess, a brief explanation can provide them with additional information; if they make a lucky guess, they will understand why their guess is right; and if they are wrong, they will know why.
5. Provide constructive feedback.
Constructive feedback not only provides learners with a “correct” or an “incorrect” cue but additional information as well. For example, imagine that an assessment on a food safety e-learning course includes an image of liquid on the floor, and the learner must guess what’s wrong in the picture. The answer, presumably, is, “spilled liquid on the floor has not been cleaned.”
The constructive feedback, assuming the learner answers correctly, could look like this: “That is right [feedback]. Spillage of water or oil on the floor must be cleaned up immediately. Liquid spilled on the floor is a dangerous physical hazard that can lead to injuries [consequence]. Always be careful when the floor is wet, and warn people around you so they do not slip [handy tip].”
Feedback must be focused, relevant, specific and consistent throughout the course. Without any of these aspects, learners could lose interest, since clarity, precision, accuracy, relevancy and consistency are all key aspects of critical thinking.
For most of us, the right type of feedback (logical, complete and fair) is a motivational factor and a driving force to better ourselves, which is what training is for. Digging into that goldmine of information that we call “feedback” and milking it for what it’s worth will ensure our workforce moves in the right direction.
