As is my practice, when I come across a definition that is new (to me) or better (than the one I currently hold) or more generous (to humans / teams of humans), I tend to catalogue it on RW. Describing the world, accurately and generously, is a moral act and forever unfinished.

As you may also know, I greedily read every word that Eric Hudson writes.

So, today’s post fulfills both of those conditions: highlighting something new (to me) and something from Eric Hudson.

I enjoyed Eric’s recent article about feedback in that it nicely staked out the territory of all the different kinds of feedback we could be considering in education. I also think it is very wise to think of feedback as an ecosystem — one that, presumably, can be healthy or unhealthy, appropriately diverse or inappropriately narrow. What jumped out to me, in addition to the robust ecosystem analogy, was Eric’s description of “broadcast feedback.” I hadn’t quite heard it described in precisely this way . . . and the definition itself will have an immediate impact on the way I think about how I use time in my classroom.

Broadcast feedback is designed for and delivered to a group. We often think of feedback as a private interaction between a teacher and a student, and in many scenarios, that’s appropriate. However, offering feedback to a whole group can spark meaningful conversation as well as avoid the repetition and redundancy that can come from giving the same individual feedback over and over.

When to Try It: Use broadcast feedback to examine student work together with your class. By gathering a group to examine an excellent model, you are providing useful information that students can apply to their own work. Do this live or use a screencasting tool like Loom to create instructional videos. Ron Berger has written extensively about the benefits of examining high-quality models with students.

I like, especially, the chance to design for “meaningful conversation.” And I thank Eric, as ever, for sparking plenty of that over the years.

Source: Eric Hudson / GOA