Promoting Prospective Teacher Competencies for Designing, Implementing, Evaluating, and Adapting Interactive Formative Feedback Strategies

Formative assessment and feedback strategies play a core role in effective learning and instruction. Thus, teachers should be able to effectively apply the theoretical and empirical insights on formative assessment and feedback strategies in their classrooms. However, designing and implementing formative feedback strategies are complex tasks. Based on the Interactive Tutoring Feedback Model we developed a seminar concept combining case-based reflections of empirically based principles for the design of formative feedback strategies; planning and designing formative feedback strategies for a typical oral or written student assignment; and implementing, evaluating, and iteratively adapting this feedback strategy using on-campus micro-teaching sessions. The benefits and constraints of this seminar concept were explored in an evaluation study with teacher students ( N = 87). Students participating in the treatment seminars had higher gains in knowledge and competencies compared to students of control groups that had either a short theoretical input or no input on feedback. Furthermore, they appreciated the mix of instructional and micro-teaching components, and rated the transferability of the knowledge and competencies they had acquired as high.

Generation and Use of Hints and Feedback in a Hilbert-Style Axiomatic Proof Tutor

This paper describes logax, an interactive tutoring tool that gives hints and feedback to a student who stepwise constructs a Hilbert-style axiomatic proof in propositional logic. logax generates proofs to calculate hints and feedback. We compare these generated proofs with expert proofs and student solutions, and conclude that the quality of the generated proofs is comparable to that of expert proofs. logax recognizes most steps that students take when constructing a proof. Even if a student diverges from the generated solution, logax still provides hints, including next steps or reachable subgoals, and feedback. With a few improvements in the design of the set of buggy rules, logax will cover about 80% of the mistakes made by students by buggy rules. The hints help students to complete the exercises.