ABSTRACT
In a previous examination of feedback research (Mory, 1996), the use of feedback in the facilitation of learning was examined extensively according to various historical and paradigmatic views of the past feedback literature. Most of the research presented in that volume in the area of feedback was completed with specific assumptions as to what purpose feedback serves. This still holds true, and even more so, because our theories and paradigms have expanded, and the field of instructional design has undergone and will continue to undergo rapid changes in technologies that will afford new advances to take place in both the delivery and the context of using feedback in instruction. It is not surprising that feedback may have various functions according to the particular learning environment in which it is examined and the particular learning paradigm under which it is viewed. In fact, feedback is incorporated in many paradigms of learning, from the early views of behaviorism (Skinner, 1958), to cognitivism (Gagne´, 1985; Kulhavy & Wager 1993) through more recent models of constructivism (Jonassen, 1991, 1999; Mayer, 1999; Willis, 2000), settings such as open learning environments (Hannafin, Land, & Oliver, 1999), and views that support multiple approaches to understanding (Gardner, 1999), to name just a few.While feedback has been an essential element of theories of learning and instruction in thepast (Bangert-Drowns, Kulik, Kulik, & Morgan, 1991), it still pervades the literature and instructional models as an important aspect of instruction (Collis, De Boer, & Slotman, 2001; Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2001).
The basic meaning of feedback has remained the same in Webster’s New World Dictionary from the 1984 edition to the current one. Webster’s (2001) continues to define feedback as
