Designing Effective Instructional Feedback Using a Diagnostic and Visualization System: Evidence from a High School Biology Class

Although instructional feedback plays an essential role in regulating learning and improving performance, few studies have systematically investigated the needs of teachers and students for instructional feedback systems or developed designs and experiments, especially at the high school level. To address this research need, the present study investigated the needs of selected students and teachers in a high school in Hubei Province, China, and designed and developed a diagnostic visual feedback system for an experimental study with 125 students from a 10th-grade biology class in the same high school. The results showed that this diagnostic visual feedback report improved student performance (ES = 0.37) and that functions such as misconception location, knowledge diagnosis, and knowledge alert were well received by students. These findings have multiple implications for facilitating the design and development of diagnostic visual feedback systems.