Zak's Weekly Musings (May 1, 2022)
To this day, I have this indelible recollection of my Q.1 Progress Report from 7th grade French. The reason why this particular narrative has stuck with me all these years later hinges on a single word: anxious. My French teacher commented that I was “anxious to participate.” What she meant, of course, is that I was nervous or reluctant to speak French. However, I interpreted “anxious” in its secondary meaning, which is to “want something very much.” In my teacher’s mind, she was providing unmistakably clear feedback. In my mind, it was similarly unmistakable, except my interpretation was totally warped. I thought her use of the word anxious meant that I was on the right track, as in “Zak very much wants to participate.” However, what she intended to say was, “Zak stinks at French.” The thing is, this disconnect between our intention and students’ interpretation of our feedback is one that is actually very common, like shockingly common.
Researchers discovered that almost 33% of feedback identified by teachers went unrecognized by any of the thousands of students who participated in this specific study. Of the feedback that was recognized, only 36% of these interactions in English and 30% in mathematics were perceived by one or more students as the teacher had intended them, suggesting that "feedback messages can be easily misunderstood." In other words, only 23% of our feedback to students is being interpreted accurately. This is a pretty eye-popping finding. So, what can we do about it?
Audio feedback is a great place to start. It turns out that students overwhelmingly prefer audio feedback. In fact, in a recent study the majority of students (67%) preferred digitally recorded feedback over text based feedback, reporting that it was more “individualized, detailed, clear, useful, and caring.”
About a month ago, Mandy introduced us to Mote. I’ve been dabbling with it a bit, and I have to say that it couldn’t be easier. It’s the first audio recording app I’ve used that integrates so seamlessly with the Google suite. With so many end-of-year assessments on the horizon, let me encourage you to reconsider the old ways of giving feedback, and encourage you instead to try giving feedback using Mote. Considering that the old ways of giving feedback are being understood 23% of the time, I’d say we don’t have anything to lose by giving Mote a shot.
For more information about the studies cited in this article, please check the Resources Archive.