Scaffolding feedback to maximize long-term error correction.

Bridgid Finn and Janet Metcalfe
Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri

Columbia University, New York, New York Scaffolded feedback was tested against three other feedback presentation methods (standard corrective feed – back, minimal feedback, and answer-until-correct multiple-choice feedback) over both short- and long-term retention intervals in order to assess which method would produce the most robust gains in error correction. Scaffolded feedback was a method designed to take advantage of the benefits of retrieval practice by providing incremental hints until the correct answer could be self-generated. In Experiments 1 and 3, on an immediate test, final memory for the correct answer was lowest for questions given minimal feedback, moderate for the answer-until-correct condition, and equally high in the scaffolded feedback condition and the standard feedback condition. However, tests of the maintenance of the corrections over a 30-min delay (Experiment 2) and over a 1-day delay (Experiment 3) demonstrated that scaffolded feedback gave rise to the best memory for the correct answers at a delay.