Student activity!
With your partner(s), discuss the following questions:
- What does the term feedback mean to you?
- What are some different ways that feedback is expressed?
- Tell us about the last time that you received feedback. How was it delivered to you? Was it helpful? Explain your answers.
Share your answers with the group.
Feedback and the Communication Process
The concept of feedback was first introduced in Unit One. Feedback is an embedded part of the process of communication. Feedback is what characterizes communication as transactional. That is to say that during the activity of exchanging thoughts, feelings, data, and information, message meaning is deciphered and interpreted. This interpretation results in signalled verbal and non verbal responses. This transaction model of communication is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
What is Feedback?
The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it.
Steven D. Levitt
Whether we realize it or not or whether we want it or not. Feedback is all around us. It can be found in the scrunching of a forehead, in the raising of an eye brow, in the nod of a head, or the squint of an eye. Feedback can be as overt as applause or an audience standing in ovation or as subtle as a frown or the tightening of lips. It can be conscious or unconscious, formal or informal, positive or negative, and everything in between.
Feedback is the signalling of thoughts, feelings, opinions, and facts between the communicator and the communicatee. These signals can be,
- written
- verbalized
- shared through non verbal signals
- a combination of all of the above
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