What if you were in a classroom and the trainer answered every participants’ comment by saying “Right” or “Incorrect”?
If this went on throughout the session imagine how confused the participants would be.
So, why is this one of the most common types of feedback to user responses in eLearning?
How can we overcome this?
If we are thinking of maximum learning transfer (and why would we not be?) then we’re giving up a great opportunity when we forgo informative feedback and instead resort to corrective feedback. Corrective feedback informs the learner whether their response is correct or incorrect but gives no explanation. We need to close the feedback loop with more constructive information.
Let’s consider come options.
- Provide Explanatory Feedback
As the title implies, explanatory feedback presents an explanation as to why a response is incorrect. This means there is a response to every response in a multi-choice quiz.
You can apply explanatory feedback to any learning experience. Especially where errors are caused by misconceptions or a lack of knowledge or skills. If you use multichoice questions regularly to monitor learning progress you can catch and recalibrate learner’s perceptions.
An analysis conducted by Clark and Mayer (2016) reports a more positive effect for explanatory feedback compared to no feedback. They conclude that there is strong evidence that explanatory feedback increases learner satisfaction, learning efficiency and leads to better learning than corrective feedback.
- What happens in the real world?
Using scenarios and simulations, you can allow learners to explore and make real world decisions while learning in a safe environment. For example, in an emergency medicine training course, the choice of one drug results in stabilising a patient. The choice of another drug results in seriously high blood pressure levels.
In a Customer service course, one response will satisfy a Customer and another might leave a Customer angry. An explanation of the effects of all answers provides a very positive learning experience. (http://modlettes.lemonbop.app/multi-choice-questions-to-assess-judgement/)
- Make use of positive feedback
What about correct responses?
Why not give participants positive feedback when they respond correctly?
In the previous section positive feedback comes in the form of a successful outcome: a patient recovers or a Customer is satisfied.
Using explanatory feedback, there is evidence that positive feedback can reduce uncertainty if learners were unsure of the correct steps to solving a problem.
Use your Modlettes multi-choice options to motivate as well as test your learners.
Start today at www.modlettes.com