Increasing Engagement with Feedback Forward

Giving Feedback on Engagement with Feedback Forward

What is engagement and why does it matter? 

Engagement is more than participation. It is not about compliance or good behavior. Engaged learners prepare, focus, contribute, and invest in their learning. Expectations for what it means to engage depend on each student’s path to progress with their goals. Engaged students perform better across nearly all metrics, and leave school prepared for the challenges of college, career, and life in general. 

Why give feedback on engagement with Feedback Forward?

Students need feedback on their engagement. In Feedback Forward, teachers can quickly give feedback on student engagement with Fast Feedback, “eliciting evidence” over several class sessions, which generates trends and data insights. With this, teachers are able to engage students in a full feedback cycle about their engagement. 

Fast Feedback’s Data Insights help teachers interpret evidence: they can identify “where students are,” providing the foundation for interventions, feedback loops with students, and reflection on the impact of instructional methods. Learning from and acting on these insights helps both teachers and students take action, because they know “where to go next.”

Strategies for Giving Feedback on Engagement

• Daily class engagement. At the end of each class period, use Feedback Forward to give feedback on how engaged students were overall. Over time, use this general engagement data to informally check in with students who start to show sudden changes in engagement. Use an engagement framework to set clear expectations and give students actionable feedback on their engagement.

• Engagement during different phases of instruction during a class period. Use Feedback Forward to gather data and better understand when students are engaged during a typical class period and which parts of a class present engagement challenges for students. By providing feedback during the same type of classroom activity each day, you can identify what skills or routines students may need to practice or what changes to classroom structures may be necessary.
  • Example:  In Algebra class, Ms. Jerez allows students to work in small collaborative groups for practice problems. Over two weeks, she gives students Fast Feedback on their engagement. Reviewing the data insights, she sees that most students are only partially engaged and a handful are consistently completely disengaged. She decides to modify her class routine and provide more structure in order to boost engagement. Before students collaborate, she asks them to work independently for 10 minutes. This change allows them time to process and work through some of the problems on their own before coming together. Additionally, she takes time for an intentional, one on one check-in with the handful of students who were completely disengaged, in order to talk through expectations and obstacles to their engagement.

• Engagement with different lessons or activities. Use Feedback Forward to gather data and better understand the effectiveness of your instructional strategies and activities. Reflect on your practice, identify activities, materials, or instructional strategies that are not highly engaging, and make changes or ask for support as needed.
  • Example: In US History class, Mr. Carey regularly incorporates student debates on topics relevant to the historical periods they are studying. Over the course of three units, he uses Fast Feedback to track student engagement during debates. He observes that students are highly engaged while preparing their arguments, but their focus and investment decrease when it’s not their turn to debate. To boost engagement, he modifies the activity by introducing audience participation. Now, during every debate, the audience has the opportunity to contribute by passing handwritten notes with ideas to the groups debating. This helps sustain engagement from all students throughout the entire activity.