LearnHub

csrd said:

Downloaded and thanks to both of you.

Feedback consciousness makes a learner a serious student. It is self-help to growth.

mawstools said:

One of these findings that is interesting to watch working here in LearnHub is #10: Delayed feedback creates a beneficial spacing effect.

Enkerli said:

Those reports do sound interesting and I’m glad that there’s an acknowledgement that some feedback may only work with certain students. For some reason, I get the impression that these items have mostly to do with situations in which learners are separate from a person giving feedback (such as a teacher). In fact, I even get the feeling that many of them relate quite directly to ESL and other L2-related fields. For instance, the advice about not interrupting the learning event seems directly related to the advice of not correcting an L2 speaker while s/he speaks. There are many occasions during which the “learning event” has very vague limits and it might be especially hard to determine if feedback is appropriately timed, given that advice. Do the reports contain something about different types of feedback such as oral, gestural, auditory, numeric, written…? Altogether, these items sound quite reasonable. I hope they won’t be transformed into “rules of thumb” or even official rules but they can certainly help provide support for some methods teachers and learners are using to give feedback to one another.

mawstools said in response to:

Enkerli, I’m just reading the reports myself. They are compiled from many areas in which data has been kept, not just language learning, but all kinds of learning. Will, himself, says he recommends that folks think of them as benchmarks against which we measure our own experience, not rules. No scientist would ask anyone to use research as rules (grin)... and he’s a fine one.

I recommend you take a look at his blog and read the comments that others are leaving on the entry where he announced the report, for a bigger perspective. The link to the blog is above in the lesson.

And, I’d love to hear more of your thinking, as you read more in this area… It seems to me vitally important that we think about how we’re shaping learning in a site that calls itself a “Learn Hub.”

Enkerli said in response to:

“I recommend you take a look at his blog and read the comments that others are leaving on the entry where he announced the report, for a bigger perspective.”

Skimmed them before, went back after reading your reply. Many comments are about Will’s decision to provide those files for free. As an Open Access advocate, I’m quite sensitive to these issues. But, in my part of the academic world, “giving away” research results seems like the logical thing to do in most situations. As much of the research in fields I’m more accustomed to is publicly-funded, I simply expect that the results are made available to the public. In fact, I associate “publishing” (in peer-reviewed journals, in books, on blogs) to “making something public.” But that’s probably because I don’t spend enough time in the “private sphere.”

The exchange of comments between Will and Mark is getting somewhere, in part because of the way the report is positioned. I sense that Mark has perceived something similar to what I’ve perceived, in some educational contexts where results of research are conceived as revelations and are integrated as they are in a program, a reform, a workshop, a retreat. I call it the “studies have shown” attitude and I have serious qualms about it. Probably because I sometimes dwell in a tower made of ivory.

“And, I’d love to hear more of your thinking, as you read more in this area…”

Well… I did read more about feedback, in the past. And I did skim Will’s report. Would you have suggestions for some openly available resource on the topic of feedback in, say, cooperative learning?

“recommends that folks think of them as benchmarks against which we measure our own experience, not rules”

Fair enough. But I’m still afraid that some people (say, in a teaching resource centre) will use them as rules or as support for the “studies have shown” attitude.

Anyhoo… Assuming the summary on Will’s blog (reproduced here) does give a fairly good idea of what Will’s major findings are (and, skimming the report, I get the impression it does)...

I can easily imagine how Will’s benchmarks would “work” in contexts of direct instruction with clear criteria for evaluating retention and understanding. Language learning is an obvious example, for me. Job training is more foreign to learning contexts in which I’ve participated but these benchmarks seem appropriate there too.

But, honestly, I have a hard time grokking what they bring to, say, seminar learning sessions on broad sets of issues, let alone to more cooperative learning contexts. In fact, I can’t help but think that these benchmarks strengthen the position of the “feedback-giver” and make the learning context more formal and more “directional” (one-to-many, instead of many-to-many). I’m personally interested in learning that is cooperative, flexible, collaborative, informal, open, and culturally aware. Not sure I hear Will’s specific points as directly useful to me.

Also, while skimming the report itself, I didn’t notice much about the feedback learners give one another, give themselves individually, receive through the task itself, give to someone with a different role, or receive informally. These all seem quite important, to me. Granted, my idea of feedback comes in part from theory of performance and ethnography of communication.

What I might like to see would be a discussion (with multiple participants) about different ways to receive and provide feedback on learning, using a wide array of micro-level descriptions as well as macro-level characterizations of diverse learning contexts. It’d be especially useful if the primary focus were on cooperative learning. Surely, these must exist. But I can’t rely on Web searches to find them.

mawstools said:

How about starting up a discussion like the one you’d like to have the results of? I am finding this community here at LearnHub to be a fascinating place to initiate discussions on topics I want to learn about cooperatively.

This is a great place to probe the “private” sphere … the nebulous NON-ACADEMIC space where people are learning INFORMALLY together.

That’s precisely my motivation for posting this resource here ;-) and we’re starting the process, aren’t we?

Want to bring it up higher in the architecture so others can SEE better what we’re talking about and join in the conversation… or would you like me to? This is a topic I’m VERY interested in!

Enkerli said in response to:

That could work. Especially if it’s well-contextualized. Not that I’m so attached to the topic but I think it’d be an interesting one to bring to discussion. Diverse forms of feedback in diverse learning contexts. What has worked or not worked in diverse situations. What are we trying to achieve. What roles are assumed through feedback-giving.

mawstools said:

Would you like to post a new discussion here, then, or elsewhere? Or would you like me to start it?

Enkerli said in response to:

It might be a good idea if you posted a discussion since my approach to the topic is still as a semi-outsider. It’s easier for me to get involved once things have already started.

mawstools said:

I will be happy to start up a discussion soon. I have an onsite commitment for the next couple of days and will get back to this first of the week. Thanks so much for pushing forward on this!