Wired Loops

Wired is an awesome magazine (thanks, Abe!). This month, the cover story is about how our brains and behavior are driven by feedback loops. According to the story, in the 1960's, Albert Bandura "observed that giving individuals a clear goal and a means to evaluate their progress toward that goal (in real time) greatly increased the likelihood they would achieve it." (I added the parenthetical "in real time," because elsewhere in the article that element is shown to be critically important.)

We provide lots of feedback to students, but a lot of it is time-delayed, and very little of it is directly applicable to evaluating their progress (or the extent of their progress) toward the goal (which is often poorly defined anyway.)

So I've been thinking about (1) how to very clearly define the goal in a course, (2) what role interim goals should play, (3) how to measure progress toward the goal or interim goal, (4) how to give immediate feedback about that progress, and (5) how to publicly track my students' progress while keeping each individual's information private.

Here's where I am so far... (more as I think more about it)

Create a pre-test for each 3-week block of work.

Lay out the calendar for the next 3 weeks, showing what's going to be covered each day and which questions on the pre-test could then be answered based on what's been covered through that day.

Give exercises (via class work) on whatever got covered that day.

Have students self-grade that work, and turn in a slip of paper with their name and score so I can track and publish it (with the names stripped out).

Give homework based on their scores (higher score = less homework). Caveat: if their quiz grade is significantly lower than their self-reported class work grades, they automatically end up in the "most homework" category.

Give quizzes I can grade within 10 minutes (10 questions, answers are right or wrong, worksheet pre-configured to spit out grade after answers are typed in). Give an in-class assignment on quiz days so that the class looks like: 5 minute warm-up, 15 minute quiz, 15 minute in-class exercise (while I grade the quizzes), 10 minute quiz return and wrap-up.

Give tests I can grade during my planning period (45 minutes) so I can return them the next day.