Recursive Feedback: Evaluative Dimensions of e-Learning

This chapter explores the promise of recursive feedback for learning and instructional design in e-learning ecologies. It argues that multimodal composition, an activity that deepens learning and engages learners in disciplinary practices through iterative processes of knowledge making and remaking, is the primary mode of new media. The chapter shares cases revealing how teachers and students have responded to opportunities for recursive feedback. It also identifies four initiators of recursion in the design and use of the Scholar platform: feedback, reflection, dialogue, and democratizing relations. The chapter also considers the ways teachers and students respond to opportunities for recursive feedback provided in the e-learning environment Scholar, intentionally designed to support cross-curricular, multimodal writing, community feedback, and revision cycles. In addition to the expanded reviewer base with which learners can engage in feedback cycles, the types of feedback learner's encounter in e-learning environments can similarly be broadened and diversified to include machine and machine-mediated feedback.