"NO LEARNING WOULD OCCUR unless some type of feedback mechanism was at work," says Edna Mory (1996).Feedback also increases motivation for learning (Malone and Lepper, 1987). 

Feedback lets learners know the accuracy of their response to an instructional question. It may compare the response to some performance standard or provide further guidance.

Feedback in computer-based instruction is "any message or display that the computer presents to the learner after a response" (Morey, 1996). Feedback provides information on correctness, precision, comparisons, motivational aspects, visual presentation, and guidance on sequence of lessons.

Emerging technologies have created new possibilities for designing instructional feedback. However, effective feedback depends on pedagogical and psychological considerations.

This article provides examples of feedback. Click on each and then evaluate and compare their effect on you as a learner. 

Click on the picture. Confusing when nothing happens, isn’t it? This is an example of poor feedback design.

To stop the animation, click on the Stop button. You receive feedback because the animation stops. To make the animation run again, refresh this page in your browser. 

Click on Play button to start the video. You will see the boat moving towards the canal. In this example you can interact with the video, stopping, rewinding, and playing it as many times as you wish. This is an good example of what emerging technologies can make for feedback design.

 Now that you have played with these examples, think about your perceptions of each situation. For instance, what can you infer about technology use in feedback design? What did you like the most? How? How not? For what audience could they be used? Among the three examples, which one did impress you the most?

One might think that technology could provide learners with effective feedback and that would guarantee learning. Research (Morey, 1996), however, shows that good feedback and good instruction are interdependent. Be sure to consider these three foundations of good feedback and instruction:

Pedagogical foundation is concerned with how information is presented, chunked, sequenced and how to guide and provide feedback to learners.

Psychological foundation is concerned with how to stimulate learners to recall prior knowledge, process new information, and organize it into an existing knowledge structure.

Technological foundation uses technical affordances to add interactivity to instruction. Learners may receive feedback though sound, animation, and symbol or graphic manipulation.

Patricia Mourthe de Oliveira
Graduate Student
SDSU Educational Technology