The feedback sandwich technique-make positive comments; provide critique; end with positive comments-is commonly recommended to feedback givers despite scant evidence of its efficacy. These two studies (N = 20; N = 350) of written peer feedback with third-year medical students on clinical patient note-writing assignments indicate that students think feedback sandwiches positively impact subsequent performance when there is no evidence that they do. The effort necessary to produce feedback sandwiches and students' unwarranted confidence in their performance impact have implications for teaching about how to give feedback.
SummaryThis study tests if the seductive details effect on transfer is mitigated by signaling. Preservice teachers (N = 73) were randomly assigned on the basis of two factors, signaling and seductive details. After learning about principles of effective feedback, participants reflected on a narrative text case illustrating the instructional material that either contained or did not contain signals (highlighting key base text) and/or seductive details (interesting but extraneous details). Whereas no group differences for signaling, or signaling by seductive details interaction were found, a significant main effect for seductive details on transfer was found, Cohen's d = 0.51. These results suggest seductive details embedded in narrative cases negatively impact analogical transfer, and the effect is not mitigated by the inclusion of signaling. This lends support to the diversion hypothesis of seductive details, which suggests that seductive details damage learning by preventing meaningful encoding in appropriate schema.
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