When computers give feedback: The role of computer-based feedback and its effects on motivation and emotions

As feedback can fulfill a variety of (e.g., learning-related or motivational) functions, it is a fundamental component of teaching. The increasing use of digital learning materials inside and outside the classroom means that computer-based feedback is gaining practical relevance alongside teachers as a "classic" feedback source. Providing automated feedback seems particularly attractive in assessments taken by many students at the same time. A digital format allows to provide individual feedback to each student immediately after they have completed a task. This might be a beneficial way to support everyday teaching, especially in times of teacher shortages.

Livia Kucklick

Providing immediate feedback to students has been proven to have many advantages. Most importantly, empirical evidence demonstrates that providing immediate, automated feedback in tests can effectively foster student learning. However, the effects of feedback on the subsequent emotions and motivation of the feedback recipients seem somewhat more complex and may not only be positive. Particularly within the context of immediate feedback, the positivity of a feedback message (i.e., whether it signals task-related success or failure) could be relevant for the corresponding effect of the feedback. In short, while feedback is often suggested in the literature as a tool to foster motivation, theory suggests that lower-performing test takers may be adversely affected in their emotional or motivational state by negative feedback. However, only few studies have actually investigated this empirically.

My research as a PhD student at the IPN addressed this research gap and investigated the complex effects of providing immediate, automated feedback during digital testing in a series of empirical experimental studies. The focus was on the affective-motivational experience of the test takers. The studies I conducted also analyzed the extent to which elements such as more elaborated feedback content or an appealing feedback design with colors, animations or pictures can have positive effects. The main aim of the work was to develop practical and empirically based recommendations for the design of digital feedback for assessments.

Overall, the results of the studies showed that positive feedback (i.e., after correct answers) had beneficial affective-motivational effects compared to no feedback. Positive feedback had a particularly positive influence on the task-level emotions and motivation of test participants. These findings suggest that automated feedback in digital testing could serve as positive reinforcement in particular, for example in simpler tests or for students with high performance levels.

Negative feedback (i.e., after incorrect answers), however, proved to be a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it fostered error correction and helped test takers to assess their performance more accurately; on the other hand, it had an unfavorable effect on the test takers' affective-motivational experience. In practice, this ambiguity of the effects means that providing immediate feedback requires careful consideration, depending on the intended function of the feedback. For example, if feedback is primarily implemented for a learning-related purpose, immediate error correction during the assessment may be desirable. However, the potential adverse affective-motivational effects of a corresponding error correction should be considered, because repeated confrontation with task-related failure through automated feedback could lead to a systematic affective-motivational disadvantage for low-performing test participants. Test performance was a crucial determinant for how the provision of feedback affected test takers' subsequent emotions. Those who received immediate, positive feedback reported more joy and pride as well as less anger and frustration. In contrast, after negative feedback, the effects were reversed and the test participants felt more anger and frustration with less joy and pride. This demonstrates the importance of considering the performance of the target group when the aim is to provide feedback as an emotional support during a computer-based assessment. These results suggest that feedback may be especially useful as positive reinforcement.

Although the affective-motivational effects of negative feedback were not positive in any of the four experimental studies of my dissertation, the results showed that the effectiveness of feedback could be influenced by the content or visual design of the feedback messages. Feedback messages with little information content, such as simple correct/incorrect feedback or pure text-only feedback messages (without images and/or animations), showed the least favorable effects on emotions and motivation during the assessment. In contrast, (1) elaborated feedback content and (2) the integration of images or friendly animations mitigated the negative affective-motivational effects of negative feedback.

In summary, the findings presented here contribute to a better understanding of the multi-layered effects of automated feedback and can thus support practitioners in using automated feedback in schools, universities and other educational contexts in a more targeted and effective way. The results clearly show that the design of negative feedback messages in particular deserves special attention. Future research should therefore explore in greater depth ways in which immediate, negative feedback can be implemented successfully in digital assessment contexts. Elaborated feedback content and multimedia elements in the feedback message might be good starting points for this.

About the author:

Dr. Livia Kuklick studied psychology at Kiel University and is a Research Scientist in the Department of Educational Research and Educational Psychology at the IPN. Her research focuses on the effects of testing and learning with immediate (multimedia) feedback as well as cognitive and affective-motivational processes in the processing of such. The work presented here is part of her dissertation.