As we saw, Hattie claims feedback affects achievements the most.
In his view, the feedback can take many forms.
Tests, mastery learning, or peer feedback for instance.
According to me, MOOCs offer the possibility
to give much more feedback to the students.
Much more flexibly and efficiently.
Let's look back at how teaching typically works.
A teacher tells new knowledge to the students.
The students try to apply this knowledge in a problem, an exercise or maybe a test.
Most of the time, this application is evaluated by the
professor, but, it does not stop there in good teaching.
The students need to be told how the professor assesses the student's work.
This is the only way to complete a
loop from the student's perspective that includes the teacher.
The only problem with this, and it's significant,
is that this does not scale at all.
Assessing the work takes a lot of time from
the teacher, and it slows down the feedback loop.
On top, if it's done in the classroom, within the classroom,
the teacher has to guarantee that everyone gets a chance to participate.
So they get good feedback, and this slows down
the class for everyone, even if the class is small.
MOOCs are much more flexible somehow.
You can have, you can add feedback mechanism in many ways.
For instance, with a quiz the student gets instantaneous feedback, twenty four seven.
With peer grading, the student can get an
almost instantaneous feedback, 24/7, but it's much more personalized.
Another option for a student to get feedback
is to ask a question in the MOOC forum.
Then the student is likely to get a quick answer, and maybe
that answer or that discussion will bubble back up to the instructor.
These are just the options that are
already possible in MOOCs, sometimes in rudimentary form.
This being said, some of those feedback mechanisms
on the big plat, platforms need to improve.
For instance, intense interaction between students or even
with the instructor on the forum is not enough.
Again it does not scale, the instructor has to be
everywhere or the student has to monitor all those discussions.
This needs somehow to be structured, so other students can benefit as well.
And even structure to the point that the students contribution can
make it above the fold into the real content of the course.