Here is a trivia question: “What was invented first, the crossword puzzle or the Ferris Wheel?” Don’t Google the answer!

I will give the correct answer...eventually. You most likely want to know the correct answer right now, and that is exactly how students often feel not only in my math class but also in their other classes as well. In my eighteen years as a math teacher, I have heard questions like “Did I get this right?” or “How did I do on the test?” many times. It is human nature to want to know if you have answered correctly.

But as educators, we should ask ourselves: “Do students learn more when they receive immediate feedback?”

My journey into answering this question and how it eventually informed the way that I teach started in the spring of 2012 when Neil Heffernan, a computer science professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts, asked me to leave my teaching job of fifteen years and help him and a group of researchers at SRI conduct a long-term educational study. My job was to train and support the teachers participating in the study. Neil and his team at WPI developed a free online tool called ASSISTments and used it to help students receive immediate feedback when answering questions on their homework. We set out to determine if students learn more this way. 

The study was a randomized controlled trial where students in the ASSISTments classrooms knew they would find out if their answers were correct right away. Students in the traditional classroom completed the assignments without immediate feedback and did not find out if their answers were right or wrong until many hours or days later. For five years I worked on the study and by the end I was excited to see the results. Not surprisingly, the researchers found that students that received immediate feedback for a whole school year learned significantly more than those that did not receive immediate feedback.

In 2017, I returned to the classroom armed with this information; I was on a quest to give students immediate feedback in as many aspects of their work as possible. To be clear, immediate feedback does not always mean within seconds. There are times that I want students to discuss and debate before receiving the correct answer. 

There are four areas where I give students immediate (or close to immediate) feedback on their work: individual classwork, group classwork, homework, and assessments. First, during the individual classwork time, I start by giving students a prompt. After students have had time to work independently and think about the prompt, I will either have students discuss their answer and process with their elbow partner or tablemates or we will have a full class discussion culminating with the correct answer and the different ways to find that answer.

We will most likely do some form of distance learning during the upcoming school year but I still want students to receive immediate feedback as they learn. I plan to replace individual classwork by recording my lessons in small chunks and embedding them into problems on ASSISTments. At the end of each recording, I will pose a question and students will respond to the question by typing in an answer. ASSISTments will give the students immediate feedback on their response. Finally, I start the beginning of the next video by reviewing the previous question. You can see what this looks like from the student point of view.

Second, the group work in my classroom is the “Thinking Classroom” model that was developed as the result of research done by Professor Peter Liljedahl from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Through his research he found that when students work in visibly randomized groups while standing at whiteboards, they are more apt to get on task faster, take risks in their learning, and discuss the math with their peers. Visibly random groups are groups that are developed at random in front of the students rather than the teacher predetermining the groups.

Students know that if they don’t like their group today, they will be in a different group tomorrow and that dynamic contributes to improved daily participation in the activity. Students discuss, debate, and solve amongst their group members and sometimes between groups. The Thinking Classroom model in my classroom has been a game changer for me because it creates the most effective mathematical discourse amongst students that I have been able to facilitate in all my years of teaching. Students always find out if they are correct before we move onto the next activity.

Third, the homework I assign (which I call a “Learning Opportunity”) is delivered using ASSISTments. My use of ASSISTments for a Learning Opportunity is similar to how teachers in the study used the site. When students do their homework, they show their work on paper but they enter their answers into ASSISTments and then they will find out immediately whether they answered correctly. I coach the students that if they answer incorrectly they should rework the problem and try answering again. One of my favorite parts of using ASSISTments for homework is that it has a feature called TeacherASSIST that allows me to embed help videos that I have created. These videos are automatically delivered to students when they are struggling with a problem. I have it set up so that when students have unsuccessfully attempted a problem three times, they receive my help video (teachers have the option to adjust this setting). Not only do students receive immediate feedback, but they also receive immediate video help. There is very little that needs to change when assigning Learning Opportunities during distance learning. The only difference is that I review the Learning Opportunities during our Zoom live sessions as opposed to during class.

Lastly, I believe that to promote learning, students deserve the quickest feedback possible on their assessments and the feedback needs to be meaningful and easy for the student to understand. After my students complete an assessment (which I call a “Show Me What You Can Do”), I record myself giving them feedback on what they did well and what gave them difficulty. This video feedback allows students to see and hear me explaining the problem to them and it has made a HUGE difference with students’ ability to understand their mistakes. I make it a priority to ALWAYS get this video feedback to them by the next school day. Even though at times this can be challenging, I firmly believe it is important because, as the immediate feedback study showed, the quick turnaround promotes learning. Once again, there is very little that needs to change for the Show Me What You Can Do during distance learning. The only difference is that if I need to meet with a student that is struggling, I will set up an individual Zoom session as opposed to having them meet with me in-person for the extra help.

Immediate feedback will improve your students’ learning. I have seen a change for the better not only in my students' understanding but also their engagement in math since I made immediate feedback a priority. Oh, and by the way, the Ferris Wheel was invented first in 1893 and the crossword puzzle did not first appear until 1913.

Wouldn’t it have been nicer to have known if you were correct immediately after you answered?

Andrew Burnett currently works as a seventh grade math teacher at FA Day Middle School in Newton, Mass. He regularly blogs and tweets about education. He currently resides in central Massachusetts with his wife, two children and a dog.