Integrating Feedback

Integrating Feedback into Interactive Lecturing

Dr. Deborah Breen

Boston University

Once you’ve taken your first steps to introduce interactivity into your classes for more interactive lectures, the next step is to consider whether your strategies are working. Are students understanding and retaining the content, along with meeting the learning outcomes of the class? Active-learning activities help students demonstrate their understanding of the material so you can address gaps in learning as they occur. To identify those gaps in learning, feedback from students is essential.

Here are 4 pointers for integrating feedback into your interactive lectures:

1. Start early

Consider contacting your students before the semester starts and asking them some simple questions about the subject through an electronic form: What has been their experience with it prior to the class? Are there challenging topics they can already identify? Obtaining some baseline information from students before the class starts will help you prepare content areas for specific attention and design activities that will enhance student learning.

2. Be inclusive

A traditional lecturing strategy is to ask students to raise their hands to answer a question. While this does give you some feedback, it doesn’t give you an understanding of how the class as a whole is managing the material as not all students will be willing to answer, especially if they are shy or struggling with concepts.

Technology provides an inclusive boost to both engaging your students and gaining more generalized feedback from the class: classroom response systems, such as Feedback activities (in UMMoodle) and polling platforms like Poll EV and Mentimeter, allow class members to answer questions anonymously, giving you valuable feedback from all students. If a significant number of students incorrectly answers a polling question about a new concept, you know that you need to adjust your lesson plan and focus on a deeper explanation of that concept.

3. Low tech also works!

You can also gain quick feedback in simpler ways: provide your students with 3-4 different coloured cards at the beginning off the semester; they can then use these cards to answer multiple choice questions (for example, a blue card is always for answer “a”; a white card is always for answer “b”; and so on) during lectures. This is a visual way of “checking the pulse” of understanding: if the correct answer is a, and the overwhelming number of cards in the air is blue, you know that most students are grasping the concept. This simple strategy does ask students to visibly commit to an answer, which may cause anxiety for students who are shy or uncertain of their understanding of the material. But the lecturer’s focus is on the card rather than on the student, which may alleviate the sense of vulnerability in providing an incorrect answer.

4. Identify the point of confusion

Another valuable strategy for feedback is the ‘muddiest point’ paper. Here, you ask students to identify what they are still confused about at the end of a specific class, week, or unit. They write about the concept that is challenging them on a note card that is collected at the end of class. Alternatively, you can offer them a shared electronic document or slide show where they can add their comments, allowing you to identify patterns in understanding or confusion. You can start the next class with clarifications as well as point students to supporting materials that will help them with their understanding.

Feedback from students is an essential part of the interactive lecturer’s tool kit. Integrating feedback strategies into your classes helps to create an inclusive tone, builds engagement and gives you the opportunity to support student success by identifying how and when more clarification about class information is needed.