Feedback.
If you’re like me, you probably believe two things. One, that feedback is essential to student learning. And two, the more immediate the feedback, the better. I’ve always suspected that students feel the same way (I know I do when I’m learning new things).
But…
maybe that’s not true. After all, there are a number of other dimensions in learning where students over-index their efficacy. Remember that study that showed students prefer lectures even though they learn better via active learning? Or how students prefer cramming over spaced studying, despite spacing yielding better results? Or how students might say they are definitely kinesthetic learners (even though they are mistaken about their learning preferences most of the time)?
Turns out, that’s true about feedback, too.
In 2014, researchers ran a few experiments to see if immediate feedback was better than delayed feedback. The expected result was that immediate feedback was more potent. In this experiment, some students received immediate feedback for a semester while others received delayed feedback (immediate feedback was looked at by the student – on average – after four days and delayed feedback was seen – on average – twelve days later).
Not surprisingly, when students received immediate feedback they spent more time examining that feedback than their counterparts who received the delayed feedback.
Students who received immediate feedback said they preferred that immediacy. Predictably the delayed feedback cohort said that they would have preferred immediate feedback over the delayed feedback.
But guess what? Students with the immediate feedback tested 8% lower than the students with delayed feedback.
So the researchers ran another study where they changed the feedback release time. Throughout the semester, each student had assignments where they sometimes received immediate feedback and other times received delayed feedback. In all cases, the tests assessed transfer of knowledge to novel problems.
And guess what happened this time? The same results. A staggering 79% of students said that the immediate feedback was better.
But their test results disputed this and again showed improved testing in cases of delayed feedback.
One explanation might be that this is another manifestation of spacing; students are revisiting content and presentation of information after some time away from the content.
However, another study showed that this might not be globally true and might depend on a few things. For instance, retrieval-based questions such as fill-in-the-blank yield better results than multiple-choice questions in delayed feedback. It also seems that more frequent “dosing” of assessments and feedback show positive indications for delayed feedback.
Yet again, desirable difficulty wins out in teaching and learning strategies!
Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash
For more information, read the study, “Delaying feedback promotes transfer of knowledge despite student preferences to receive feedback immediately“, “ManyClasses 1: Assessing the Generalizable Effect of Immediate Feedback Versus Delayed Feedback Across Many College Classes“, or listen to episode 58 of the Learning Scientists Podcast.
