5 Essential Components of Interactive Instructional Feedback
The instructional value of any interactive learning experience lies in the feedback provided. This post lists the five components that go into crafting the best instructional feedback.
- EVALUATION OF LEARNER’S RESPONSE:
Any graded quiz allows you to immediately inform the learners on the correctness or incorrectness of their response. Evidence links the immediateness of feedback to better learning outcomes.
While instructional design literature continues to debate the motivational impact of the correct-incorrect feedback, such feedback enables the learner to discriminate the incorrect options from correct option. A correct-incorrect feedback can multiply the instructional value of the quiz if the learner is allowed another try at the question.
- NEGATION OF THE INCORRECT OPTION:
All incorrect options are listed in contrast to the correct option.
To further the learning gains from a multiple choice/response interactivity, the learner is allowed to successively eliminate or list the incorrect options till the correct option is chosen. While this may seem a redundant and uneconomical part of the feedback to some designers, it widens the scope of an interactivity from an assessment to an instrument of instruction.
- RATIONALE FOR THE INCORRECTNESS OF OTHER OPTIONS:
The learner is informed of the reason “why” a particular option is not correct.
Businesses and processes suffer not from mistakes but from repetitive mistakes. This component of the interactive feedback truly elevates an assessment to an instrument of instruction. The learner’s choice of an incorrect option is an opportunity to engineer a better discrimination between the incorrect option and the question stem. Providing a rationale for incorrectness of other options inculcates understanding of real-world consequences of incorrect decisions.
- AFFIRMATION OF THE CORRECT OPTION:
The process of elimination or discrimination ends with the affirmation of the correct option.
An essential component of the feedback is affirming the correct option. This tactic is known to result in better retention of learning than merely using the correct-incorrect feedback.
- RATIONALE FOR THE CORRECTNESS OF THE OPTION:
The learner is informed of “why” the particular option is correct.
It can be the case that the user chooses the correct option but because of a flawed rationale or without any rationale. Unless the correct rationale is explicitly stated, the interactivity falls short of becoming an instrument of instruction. Also, the correct rationale enables the learner to generalize the knowledge to real-life situations.
