Feedback and Learning: Lessons from the pocket guitar

Student centered active learning depends on use of feedback. In this presentation we explore different dimensions of feedback - kind and utility. This is a presentation of effects, on learning and instruction, of tuning an assessment from a primarily summative exercise to (in addition) partly formative in nature. This happend in a physics for non-science majors course. The weekly quizzes are primarily summative but when, after grading the quizzes students were afforded the opportunity to reclaim up to 10% of the maximum credit back, it became a partly formative assessment. Students earned points back by visiting with an instructor (including Graduate teaching assistants) and explaining what they missed, why the error happened and how it can be fixed. Data from meetings with students was recorded and analyzed. Reflections from the analysis will be presented. This instructor gets a personal glimpse of how hard learning can be by learning a new skill: playing a score with a guitar. To support learning this new skill the pocket guitar was purchased - it became a metaphor for the effects diverse kinds of feedback, used in optimal ways, has on learning.