If you’ve ever read the Teachstone blog, then you may have come across this very popular post written by Teachstone’s very own CLASS coding expert and client success guru, Nikki Croasdale. In her post, she likens the Quality of Feedback dimension to the old Tootsie Roll Pop commercial featuring a little boy asking a cartoon owl, “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop?” Comparing this classic question to a common Quality of Feedback question (“How many back-and-forth exchanges make a feedback loop?”), she describes how CLASS defines this dimension, concluding that there is no magic number; when it comes to feedback loops it’s about quality, not quantity.
About a month after that post was published, I attended a CLASS observation training conducted by fantastic affiliate trainer, Marilyn Rice. In her training, I was delighted when she referenced this blog post as she explained the Quality of Feedback dimension. I was even more tickled when she handed out Tootsie Roll Pops to her participants, offering a visual reminder that truly stuck with them throughout the training. A truly creative trainer, Marilyn took what she learned from a single blog post and turned it into a unique learning experience for her training participants. I left that training confident that although I’m sure those participants will experience the typical reliability test anxieties, they would always remember and understand the true meaning of Quality of Feedback—one of the toughest dimensions for observers to conceptualize and code accurately.
As a trainer, how do you think “outside the box” and create unique learning experiences for your participants? Let us know how you go the extra mile like Marilyn did in this example! You never know, maybe you could be the next trainer featured in this blog!
