Do students prefer to learn from a machine?
A bit of a professional disclaimer to this week’s geek study. I do not believe that technology is ever an effective substitute for good teaching (and this is a belief rooted in quite a few empirical studies as well). Technology is a tool. My interest is how tools are leveraged by teachers to help and increase learning by students. I found the results of this study to be surprising. I’d also hesitate to draw huge conclusions from a study at a large education college and apply those results to K through 12 education.
That said, this is interesting.
While this article’s headline is hyperbolic, it does share a fascinating study from The International Journal of English Studies. Education students were placed in two groups. In one group, students received feedback on writing assignments from live instructors. A comparison group received feedback from a software program called Criterion. The study’s intent: to identify differences in how students responded to different forms of feedback. In short, Would students receive feedback better from one or the other and how would they act on that feedback?
The computer program appeared to transform the students’ approach to the process of receiving and acting on feedback.Comments and criticism from a human instructor actually had a negative effect on students’ attitudes about revision and on their willingness to write, the researchers note. By contrast, interactions with the computer produced overwhelmingly positive feelings, as well as an actual change in behavior—from “virtually never” revising, to revising and resubmitting at a rate of 100 percent. As a result of engaging in this process, the students’ writing improved; they repeated words less often, used shorter, simpler sentences, and corrected their grammar and spelling. These changes weren’t simply mechanical. Follow-up interviews with the study’s participants suggested that the computer feedback actually stimulated reflectiveness in the students—which, notably, feedback from instructors had not done.
Why would this be? First, the feedback from a computer program like Criterion is immediate and highly individualized—something not usually possible in big classes like those at Alexandria University, the site of the study by El Ebyary and Windeatt. Second, the researchers observed that for many students in the study, the process of improving their writing appeared to take on a game like quality, boosting their motivation to get better. Third, and most interesting, the students’ reactions to feedback seemed to be influenced by the impersonal, automated nature of the software.”Annie Murphy Paul
There’s a lot to crunch through here. Part of me wonders if generational components affected the differences in responses? What social elements allow for students to respond better to a machine rather than an individual?
And does it really matter, as long as their writing improved?