4 Tips to Give Helpful Feedback to Your Learners
Learners want feedback—including personalized feedback with explanations and suggestions for improvement—according to a study at Athabasca University.
By providing feedback in your e-Learning course, you can create a personal interaction with learners and improve their knowledge retention. If learners know why they learned something and how it’s relevant, they’ll be more likely to remember and apply that knowledge to their jobs after training is over.
By providing feedback in your e-Learning course, you can create a personal interaction with learners and improve their knowledge retention. If learners know why they learned something and how it’s relevant, they’ll be more likely to remember and apply that knowledge to their jobs after training is over.
These 4 tips can help you give helpful feedback to your Learners:
- Be specific with feedback—When giving feedback in a quiz, don’t just tell learners an answer was wrong. Tell them why the answer was wrong and why the correct answer is the best choice. Include check marks and cross marks next to the correct/incorrect answers, this will increase the understanding of the learner. Your learners will be much more motivated if they aren’t confused about why they’re doing poorly or how they can improve.
- Include feedback right away—Don’t wait until the end of the course to provide all your feedback. Prompt feedback throughout the course allows learners to assess existing knowledge and to reflect on what they’ve learned, plus what they still need to learn. It also allows them to take suggestions for improvement, so they can use those suggestions as they’re working through the remainder of the course. One way to give immediate feedback is through checkpoints in an e-Learning course/game.
- Give genuine praise.—If you reward your learners with a “Good job!” graphic every time they answer a question, they’re not going feel accomplished by the end of your course. Be honest while giving feedback. If they get a quiz answer wrong, show an appropriate graphic and provide the correct answer and an explanation for why. You don’t have to give over-the-top praise for every single question they get right. A quick note of affirmation will be fine—save the big celebration for the end of the course.
- Ask your learners to give you feedback too.— Learners appreciate the opportunity to respond to what they liked or didn’t like about your course. At the end of the course, Add a survey, so you can find out what you need to improvise. Answers should be anonymous to ensure you get honest feedback. An end-of-course survey is a great way to help you evaluate your e-Learning course.
Aman Vohra
