Student-to-teacher feedback drives compounding gains in learning because when teachers know how their teaching is landing and adjust, the effects ripple back to students. Same with learning software.
Paper: Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement
What if the fastest way to help a student is first to help the teacher? Students need feedback, but teachers can benefit from feedback even more.
In the Visible Learning paper, John Hattie found that the most critical feature in classrooms was the creation of situations for teachers to receive more feedback about their teaching.
Student-to-teacher feedback helps make learning visible for both sides. Teachers become learners of their own teaching and see learning through the eyes of the students. That drives teachers to adjust and makes students feel seen. The student-to-teacher feedback has a ripple effect that benefits both the student and the class, ultimately improving the teaching and the relationship with the learners.
The same principle applies to learning software as well. Software must adapt to learners' feedback and be able to determine whether the input should be used to improve the experience for all learners using the software or to personalize the experience for specific learners.