Feedback providing improvement strategies and reflection on feedback use: Effects on students’ writing motivation, process, and performance

This study investigated the effects of feedback providing improvement strategies and a reflection assignment on students’ writing motivation, process, and performance. Students in the experimental feedback condition (n = 41) received feedback including improvement strategies, whereas students in the control feedback condition (n = 41) received feedback without improvement strategies. Within each feedback condition, half of the students received a reflection assignment on feedback use and the revision (experimental reflection condition), while the other half received a reflection assignment on feedback perception (control reflection condition). Results indicated that in the experimental feedback condition writing performance gained from the control reflection assignment, while in the control feedback condition it gained from the experimental reflection assignment. Improvement strategies negatively predicted self-efficacy beliefs, especially when initial self-efficacy beliefs were low, and positively predicted planning/revising. Reflections on feedback use and the revision positively predicted mastery goal when mastery goal initially was low or moderate.     

Deriving word meanings from context: does explanation facilitate contextual analysis?

The ability to derive the meanings of words from supportive story contexts was studied in 45 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds. Children read short stories each containing a different novel word and defined the word at the end of each story. There were three intervention sessions. One group was asked to justify their definition and subsequently received feedback on its accuracy. A second group was given feedback first and asked to explain how the experimenter knew the correct answer. A third (control) received feedback only. In general, practice led to improved performance, with an increased number of children in all groups using the story context to derive meanings for the novel words in a post‐intervention test. Children in the two explanation groups made the greatest gains in definition accuracy. The implications for teaching vocabulary learning skills are discussed.     

Effects of achievement goals on self-control

Recent research has shown that achievement goals differ in their effects on working memory capacity and the metacognitive judgment of learning as part of the self-regulatory process. To extend this line of inquiry, we examined the effects of achievement goals on self-control, arguably the most critical subset of self-regulation. In three experiments, adolescent and early-adult learners were randomly assigned to mastery goal, performance-approach goal, and performance-avoidance goal conditions and performed self-control tasks in ego-depleting contexts. Students in the mastery goal condition demonstrated significantly better performance than students in the performance-approach goal condition on a task that required attentional control (Experiment 1) and inhibitory control after negative feedback (Experiments 2 and 3). The performance of students in the performance-avoidance goal condition did not differ significantly from that of students in the mastery goal or the performance-approach goal conditions. Planned-comparison ANCOVAs nonetheless revealed that, across all three experiments, the self-control performance of the students in the mastery goal condition was significantly better than that of the students in the two performance goal conditions combined. Mediation analysis further suggested that performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals evoked more task-irrelevant thoughts than mastery goals did, which subsequently interrupted students’ self-control performance (Experiment 3). We discuss the implications of the mechanisms underlying motivational influences on self-control for adolescents, who experience frequent self-regulation failures in learning contexts.     

Which feedback is more effective for pursuing multiple goals of differing importance? The interaction effects of goal importance and performance feedback type on self-regulation and task achievement

This study examined how performance feedback type (progress vs. distance) affects Korean college students’ self-regulation and task achievement according to relative goal importance in the pursuit of multiple goals. For this study, 146 students participated in a computerised task. The results showed the interaction effects of goal importance and performance feedback type on self-regulation and task achievement. Specifically, the participants in high goal importance conditions who received distance feedback showed higher self-regulation of metacognition (goal setting), motivation-emotion (efforts investment, task enjoyment) and task achievement (task completion time, task score) than those who received progress feedback. In addition, effort investment and task enjoyment increased in the latter part of the task for the participants in high goal importance conditions who received distance feedback, whereas they decreased for those who received progress feedback. However, the opposite results were shown for the participants in low goal importance conditions.     

What changes,and for whom? A study of the impact of learning analytics-based process feedback in a large course

Recent developments in educational technologies have provided a viable solution to the challenges associated with scaling personalised feedback to students. However, there is currently little empirical evidence about the impact such scaled feedback has on student learning progress and study behaviour. This paper presents the findings of a study that looked at the impact of a learning analytics (LA)-based feedback system on students' self-regulated learning and academic achievement in a large, first-year undergraduate course. Using the COPES model of self-regulated learning (SRL), we analysed the learning operations of students, by way of log data from the learning management system and e-book, as well as the products of SRL, namely, performance on course assessments, from three years of course offerings. The latest course offering involved an intervention condition that made use of an educational technology to provide LA-based process feedback. Propensity score matching was employed to match a control group to the student cohort enrolled in the latest course offering, creating two equal-sized groups of students who received the feedback (the experimental group) and those who did not (the control group). Growth mixture modelling and mixed between-within ANOVA were also employed to identify differences in the patterns of online self-regulated learning operations over the course of the semester. The results showed that the experimental group showed significantly different patterns in their learning operations and performed better in terms of final grades. Moreover, there was no difference in the effect of feedback on final grades among students with different prior academic achievement scores, indicating that the LA-based feedback deployed in this course is able to support students’ learning, regardless of prior academic standing.     

The Effects of Modeling,Feedback, and Experiential Methods on Counselor Empathy

This study compares the effects of three supervisory techniques—modeling, feedback, and experiential intervention—in teaching counseling students to communicate empathic understanding. The students participated in three simulated counseling interviews during which their responses to standard clients were rated on the degree of empathic understanding conveyed. After each of the first two interviews students in the experimental groups were given one of the three supervisory treatments; students in the control group received no supervision. The ratings indicated that the modeling method of supervision was more effective than the feedback method and the feedback method was more effective than the experiential method in helping the counselors communicate empathy. No significant differences were found between students receiving experiential supervision and those in the control group. The interaction between method and sex was significant in that male students responded better than female students to the feedback method.     

Team-Based Testing Improves Individual Learning

In two experiments, 90 undergraduates took six tests as part of an educational psychology course. Using a crossover design, students took three tests individually without feedback and then took the same test again, following the process of team-based testing (TBT), in teams in which the members reached consensus for each question and answered until they were correct. Students took the other three tests individually with feedback. All students were individually tested over a portion of this content two weeks later and again after two months. Independent samples t tests revealed that TBT students scored higher when retested two months later than those who took the test individually. Finally, three-fourths of the students reported that they enjoyed TBT more than individual testing. Although TBT requires more class time to administer, it appears to be beneficial for long-term student learning.     

Using Performance Feedback To Decrease Classroom Transition Time And Examine Collateral Effects On Academic Engagement

Performance feedback has been described as a necessary component of consultation. Although feedback has been used to improve academic performance of individual students, less research has examined the effects on classroom academic engagement when implementation of classroom management variables is the source of feedback. Using a multiple-baseline design, the effects of performance feedback with goal setting was examined across three high school biology teachers who were first provided with feedback on the number of seconds devoted to transitions and then successful implementation of classroom time management strategies. Feedback on the number of transition minutes alone led to decreases in transition time and corresponding increases in student academic engagement for all teachers. One teacher benefited from additional feedback on classroom time management strategies. For all teachers, low rates of transition time and high rates of academic engagement were maintained when the intervention was faded and after it was terminated.     

‘Consider the Opposite’ – Effects of elaborative feedback and correct answer feedback on reducing confirmation bias – A pre-registered study

Unbiased reasoning is considered an essential critical thinking skill that students need to possess to face the future challenges in their work and life. Confirmation bias, which is the tendency to selectively attend to information that is consistent with held beliefs, presents a significant thread to unbiased reasoning. An effective strategy to reduce confirmation bias is the ‘consider-the-opposite’-strategy (COS). The central question of this pre-registered study was whether providing elaborative, worked example feedback after COS practice would lead to a better performance on previously practised and transfer tasks than correct-answer feedback. Participants were 132 university students who took a confirmation bias pre-test, watched an instructional video on COS afterwards and next received either worked example feedback or correct answer feedback on practice tasks, practised only, watched the instruction only or received no treatment. Finally, all participants took a learning test assessing their skill to avoid confirmation bias, and a transfer test assessing whether they could apply this acquired skill to problems containing other biases. Results revealed no differences on the learning test between both feedback conditions, but students who received feedback scored significantly higher on the confirmation bias problems than students who did not receive feedback. We carried out our pre-registered analysis plan, but due to the low reliability of particularly the pre-test, we carried out an additional exploratory analysis on subsets of post-test items and a subset of transfer test items. Results on learning revealed the same pattern as the planned analyses. However, we found no differences between any of the conditions on transfer.     

The relative effectiveness of lecturing,modeling, and role playing in training paraprofessional reading tutors

Three methods of training remedial reading tutors were compared. One group of college student volunteers heard lectures and received written handouts describing seven tutoring skills. Another group received the handouts and observed an expert model demonstrate the skills. A third group was given handouts, practiced the skills, and received feedback on performance. All groups attended eight half-hour training sessions. Data from videotaped tutoring tests indicated all groups made significant improvements in the target behaviors. The group that practiced the skills and received feedback made the greatest gains and was significantly better than the other two groups at the end of treatment. The demonstration group also was significantly better than the lecture group.     

Classroom Testing Procedures,Test Anxiety,and Achievement

Four groups (N = 116) were maintained in a 4-factor analysis of covariance design to determine if more frequent, graded unit examinations followed by test feedback facilitate achievement and allow students with high-measured test anxiety to perform better on final course examinations. The testing procedures studied consisted of the administration of 168 examination items as either three or six unit exams, grading or not grading the unit exams, and providing or not providing class feedback and discussion following the examinations. Analysis of performance on two posttest measures indicated that the subjects achieved more from frequent, graded unit tests followed by feedback; however, variations of these conditions did not appear to influence the performance of the students with high-measured test anxiety.     

Type of Feedback and Young Children's Performance on Computer Presented Reading Readiness Activities

Summary Forty children, between the ages of three years ten months and four years six months and with a mean age of four years three months, did computer‐presented reading‐readiness activities under different pre‐activity and feedback conditions. The children were randomly allocated within sexes to four groups. Group 1 listened to a story which involved a teddy bear character called BJ Bear and then did reading‐readiness activities such that the smiling face of the bear appeared on the screen and a tune played when they responded correctly, and the sad face of the bear when they were incorrect. Group 2 listened to the story and then did the activities with the smiling face of the bear and a tune when correct, but with nothing when they were wrong. Group 3 did not receive the story, but did the activities with both the smiling face of the bear and a tune when correct, and the sad face of the bear when incorrect. Group 4 also did not receive the story and did the activities with the smiling face of the bear and a tune when correct, but with nothing when they were wrong. Overall it was found that children did significantly better if given the story about BJ before the activities. There was also a significant interaction between the story condition, feedback for incorrect responses and sex such that performance was better for all with‐story groups except in the case of boys with no feedback.     

Control of feedback in computer-assisted instruction

Although considerable research has been conducted on both learner control and feedback, very little research has addressed the effect of giving learners control over the feedback that they receive. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of learner control over feedback in a CAI lesson. Subjects used one of four CAI programs which provided either program control or learner control over verification or elaboration feedback. Results indicated that subjects who received elaboration feedback during instruction performed better than students who received verification feedback. Type of control did not have a significant influence on performance. However, when subjects selected feedback for items answered incorrectly during instruction, subjects under learner control/elaboration performed better on the posttest than subjects under learner control/verification. Implications for the design of CAI are discussed.     

Level of adjunct question,type of feedback,and learning concepts by reading

The effects of level of adjunct question (factual, application) and type of feedback (no feedback, correct answer feedback, self-correction feedback) on learning concepts from prose were examined. Feedback influenced performance on the questions asked during instruction, but did not facilitate concept learning. Adjunct application questions produced better concept learning when there was a 1-day interval between study and test (Experiment 1), but not when the test was immediate (Experiment 2). The results suggest that, contrary to widely held views, feedback does not necessarily facilitate concept learning and that adjunct application questions do not always facilitate the learning of concepts through reading.     

A surprising effect of feedback on learning

As meta-analyses demonstrate feedback effects on performance, our study examined possible mediators. Based on our cognitive–motivational model [Vollmeyer, R., & Rheinberg, F. (1998). Motivationale Einflüsse auf Erwerb und Anwendung von Wissen in einem computersimulierten System [Motivational influences on the acquisition and application of knowledge in a simulated system]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie, 12, 11–23] we examined how feedback changed (1) strategies, and (2) motivation during learning, and by doing so improved (3) final performance. Students (N = 211) learned how a dynamic system works and how to reach given goal states for the system. One group received feedback (i.e., knowledge of performance) the other one did not. We expected learners to improve after they received the first feedback. However, we found that learners expecting feedback used better strategies right from the start. Thus, they acquired more knowledge over fewer trials. Although we had also expected effects of feedback on motivation during learning, we could not support this hypothesis.     

The correction of errors committed with high confidence

Most theories predict that when people indicate that they are highly confident they are producing their strongest responses. Hence, if such a high confidence response is in error it should be overwritten only with great difficulty. In contrast to this prediction, we have found that people easily correct erroneous responses to general information questions endorsed as correct with high-confidence, so long as the correct answer is given as feedback. Three potential explanations for this unexpected hypercorrection effect are summarized. The explanation that is tested here, in two experiments, is that after a person commits a high-confidence error the correct answer feedback, being surprising or unexpected, is given more attention than is accorded to the feedback to low-confidence errors. This enhanced attentional capture leads to better memory. In both experiments, a tone detection task was presented concurrently with the corrective feedback to assess the attentional capture of feedback stimuli. In both, tone detection was selectively impaired during the feedback to high confidence errors. It was also negatively related to final performance, indicating that the attention not devoted to the tone detection was effectively engaged by the corrective feedback. These data support the attentional explanation of the high-confidence hypercorrection effect.     

Learning 'How' Versus Learning 'When': Improving Transfer of Problem-Solving Principles

How can problem solving be improved in domains where similar principles are learned? A series of three experiments based on Ross (1987) examined how instructing learners about when to apply problem-solving principles may later improve performance. In Experiment 1, subjects studied a similar pair (combinations and permutations) or a distinct pair (combinations and conditional probability) of probability principles. Haft of the subjects received information on when to apply the principles (applicability-instructions condition), whereas other subjects received instructions that reviewed how to solve problems using the principles (procedural-review condition). Subjects who received applicability instructions made fewer confusion errors than subjects who received procedural-review instructions when learning the similar problem pair. However, this instructional manipulation had no effect when subjects were learning the distinct problem pair. Because applicability instructions affect confusion errors but not overall performance, they may improve the ability to identify when to apply a procedure but may not improve memory for the formula or the ability to instantiate it. Experiment 2 supported this notion by showing that subjects given applicability instructions did better at selecting when to use each formula. Experiment 3 tested whether giving learners the pairs of examples to review together afforded them the opportunity to learn the applicability conditions on their own. The results showed that the important differences between the principles (i.e., why the formulas apply in certain situations) must be identified in the instructional material because subjects were not likely to induce the differences on their own. The results showed that when differences between the related principles are identified in instructional material (i.e., why the formula applies in certain problems), these applicability instructions may serve to reduce confusion in noticing and selecting...     

Improvement of orthography test performance by relaxation exercises: results of a controlled field experiment in basic secondary education

The effects of relaxation exercises on orthography performance in language arts education of fifth to seventh graders were experimentally tested. Participants were 399 basic secondary school students and their language arts teachers from the Hauptschule, a German type of secondary education covering grades five to nine that leads to a basic educational degree. Half of the students were trained in their classrooms in the basic autogenic training (AT) formulas (self‐suggestions of passive self‐attention, heaviness and warmth) and in the technique of reactivation after relaxation. After completing a regular dictation test students applied the relaxation exercise for four minutes on their own and were then given the opportunity to reread what they had written and to correct any mistakes they found on the test. In comparison to 200 students in the control group (who were not trained in the systematic relaxation exercises), who were also given the opportunity to revise their texts after a four‐minute break, the experimental group students made significantly fewer mistakes and received better grades on the test. In addition, the results show that there were significantly fewer correct revisions and significantly more incorrect revisions of the dictation tests made by the students in the control group, thus worsening their academic performance by the possibility of ‘self‐correction’. Students and teachers evaluated AT exercises positively. Implications of the results for the application of AT in the classroom are discussed.     

The Study of Number Sense: Realistic Activities Integrated into Third-Grade Math Classes in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

The authors compared the performance of students who received integration of number sense activities in instruction with students who received instruction using regular mathematics textbooks. Two classes of third-grade students (N = 60) were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Students in each group were given a pretest, post I test, and post II test, and were interviewed individually across 20 class periods of intervention. Results showed that the performance of the students in the experimental group was significantly higher than those in the control group. The interview data also showed that the students in the experimental group performed better than students in the control group in flexible and effective ways to use number sense.