Points of Feedback: Creating Feedback-Driven Learning Experiences

Title: Points of Feedback: Creating Feedback-Driven Learning Experiences

Presenters: Casey McArdle (CAL/WRAC); Kate Fedewa (CAL/WRAC); Sarah Gibbons (CAL/WRAC); Jeff Kuure (CAL/WRAC); Kristin Pratt (CAL/WRAC); Mike Ristich (CAL/WRAC); Kate Birdsall (CAL/WRAC)

Format: WTMC

Date: May 10th, 2023

Time: 10:15 am - 11:15 am 

Room: 3202

Description:
As academic and professional spaces become more collaborative, feedback–informative and immediate–plays a larger role in how relationships and learning are fostered and supported between student and teacher, and between supervisors and employees. Establishing a solid framework for feedback that is sustainable in-person and online can limit communication issues and support spaces for growth. SUNY-Albany Professor Emeritus Peter Johnston notes: “If students can provide productive feedback, then collectively they will tend to get more feedback. And it will be more immediate feedback, because, rather than waiting for the teacher, their peers can provide it. More feedback improves learning, and immediate feedback is more effective than delayed feedback.” Johnston’s model for feedback allows students to take the initiative and seek out feedback from one another, and perhaps even develop their own parameters for the feedback they would like to receive. Frequent and immediate feedback, then, gives students opportunities to address small and large concerns regarding texts, processes, or systems. Fluidity and frequency of feedback, as well as the foundational principle of feedback as a multi-directional process, rather than only delivered unto students from professors, allows students of all backgrounds to invest in the development not only of their own work, but also the classroom community. This panel will explore how feedback plays a crucial role across all learning experiences. We will provide examples from faculty development, writing courses, leadership courses, project management scenarios, coding courses, and upper level user experience courses. We will also discuss how these examples might be applied in other disciplines.