The feedback loop is required for all learning. You can encode responses to stimulus in DNA or programming, but learning is the ability to selectively change thought or response based upon feedback. The internet wouldn't exist without feedback loops, and neither would education. There is a multitude of other factors involved in human learning, but feedback loops are one of the most basic, and most easily resolved factors.

I’d like to describe how the feedback loop can be optimized in human education with software. However, first we must briefly explore the feedback loop in its simplest, most efficient form.

The two key parts are highlighted in red. Both of these must exist in the feedback loop for learning to occur. Without one, it degrades into either random response, or simple stimulus/response. When no feedback is collected, an entity may act based on pre-programmed behaviors to a changing stimulus, but it will not be intelligently defined action. When the entity does not select a response to the stimulus, it is doomed to either perform the same response for eternity, or give no response at all.

Now we come to optimization factors. The example below is a common school feedback loop.

Student gets homework assignment

Student answers all homework questions (Response Selection)

Student turns in homework assignment

Time passes

Teacher grades all questions

Time passes

Teacher returns assignment

Student reviews graded assignment (Feedback Collection)

The above homework assignment creates a feedback map like this:

It takes 35 steps to complete 1 feedback improvement loop. This type of feedback loop is good for a final examination of learned knowledge, but not for practice homework. So how do we fix this?

Loop Steps

A measure of efficacy for a feedback loop is the number of steps involved before a loop is closed. Most feedback loops are more complex than the basic 4-step example. Like our homework example, often there are multiple process loops interwoven into a single feedback loop. Reducing steps in a loop can decrease complexity of response selection, reduce variables in response, reduce time, thus increasing efficacy.

Loop Speed

Fewer steps should also decrease loop time, which is another important factor. In this homework example, the student may respond incorrectly several times before getting feedback, reinforcing incorrect concepts. While waiting for grades, the student will make the same mistakes as in the assignment, crystalizing incorrect learning. The faster a feedback cycle is complete, the more informed subsequent responses will be.

Loop Efficacy

The last measure of performance for a feedback loop is effectiveness. Was the proper response chosen? Was a concept only partially learned? Was the response detrimental? Did the response change based on new data? Can it be applied in different contexts, or combined in novel ways and still used properly? These are all ways to view the efficacy of response selection after a feedback loop. It is up to the validation manager (or teacher) to ask these types of questions when evaluating studies.

The Solution?

Using software, we could greatly improve the feedback loop speed as shown below:

Since we can't all have teachers in our home, but we can have software, programs and apps can unlock capability that was previously impossible. Duolingo is one of my favorite learning apps because it does exactly this. It reduces the feedback loop of an assignment to its simplest form, improving accuracy with each question answered. Proper feedback is given for both correct and incorrect responses. If all education could be performed in this way with shorter and more engaging feedback loops, we would have higher participation, and higher efficacy in learning.

What other measures of performance for a learning feedback loop can you think of? Please feel free to share if you come up with any!

I'm going to say it right now. The next disruptive advance in movies is VRM. Virtual Reality Movies. We're at a time where VR technology has finally caught up with the idea. The only question is, can the media creators keep up with the technology?

UPDATE: 1/4/2015
Here are a couple of links that show the technology for this shift is quickly approaching. The first made-for-VR movie, and the VR video camera.

The Frame

Media creation hinges upon "the frame." It's a limitation imposed by the medium itself. It's what you see through in TV, movie screens, monitors, smartphones, photos and paintings. These all have a frame that becomes your window into fantasy. If you were to look a few feet away from what the frame shows in movies and TV, you'd see half-finished walls, green screens, actors and crew sitting around in an area that is completely alien to the content you've had framed for you. The frame is a safe, limited viewpoint that allows imaginary worlds to be created very cheaply. What happens when you remove that artificial frame?

Frameless Media

Google Cardboard and the Oculus Rift brings the opportunity to remove the frame entirely. The new frame becomes your own eyes. A 360° horizon, everything you see when looking around you. The potential is great. For example, you're watching a murder mystery movie and you could look around at clues and people as if you were in the scene. What if you were in a Lord of the Rings movie walking along mountain vistas and were able to look anywhere around you?

Problems, or Opportunities?

360° view in a single frame

Without the frame, movie production gets expensive. The expense of replacing narrow stage slices with scenery and action for entire 360° areas adds up quickly. Then we must consider the story and actors. How do you position actors and action in a way that ensures story delivery is relevant no matter where the viewer is looking? With the ability to look around as if you were there, is a new genre created where you are a silent participant in the scene? Do actors act toward you, as if you were in the scene? Z-axis blocking becomes a thing of the past. The new technique is central axis blocking, where instead of filming for a single direction, you have more than 6 to contend with (including above and below). There are several existing solutions to these questions, and many more to be found. I'm very excited to see the different ways these will be handled by imaginative directors.

Interaction

Come to think of it, if we're essentially in the scene with the ability to look around us, why stop there? Why not create stories in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure books, where you make a few key decisions, then watch the story unfold before you. This adds return viewers, as people will want to see how the VRM plays out with different decisions. But wait...don't we do this already?

Game Frame

Not the future of VRM

When you add interaction to a movie, it essentially becomes a video game. Games are the primary platform for VR tech, and they've been handling the frameless movie for a couple of decades now, with interactivity. The primary differences between movies and games is interaction, and the believability of scenes. Games have a decades-long jump on movies in interactivity. Movies have an advantage over video games in big budgets and reality of scenery and acting.

VRM games will surpass VRM theatres in the immersion factor. Anything shot in film (or pre-rendered) has limited immersive capability, whereas a world of digital scenery and digital actors will have unlimited immersion potential. The believability gap between games and movies is quickly closing, allowing games to create highly believable, and 100% responsive environments at the same time.

How Will It Happen?

A bit closer to the final destination

VRM will still be disruptive to movies, but it won't happen in theatres. It will happen in your home. VRM will become an outgrowth of video games. A subgenre. From an interactivity standpoint, VRM in a movie theatre would be like playing Dragon's Lair on the old arcade, whereas playing it on your game console would be like playing Dragon Age to the nth degree. When VR devices quickly become as ubiquitous as the Wii remote or Kinect, it will empower game companies to release media more as interactive films. Some games have already taken this turn by releasing games such as Final Fantasy XIII that are essentially movies with only a bare minimum of interaction.

Budgetary constraints, technology, convenience, interaction demand, and personal comfort factors will prevent widespread success of VRM from theatres. Over time, movie theatres will become like gigantic record players of an age gone by. With any luck, entrepreneurs will turn those defunct movie/VRM houses into live stage performance venues updated with the latest performance advances (light projection, stage drone actors, audience voting, etc.).

Antisocial Media

"It's time that we learn to examine the humanity in any technology we create or use."

As a final note, movies are a social medium. We rarely attend alone, and we revel in sharing the experience with others. They're an excuse to go outside and be with the people we care about, and an excuse to be with people we've only just met. Socially, movie theatres are a huge success. They enrich our lives by connecting us in close proximity with other people in a shared experience.

In a VRM theatre, we are disconnected from those who go with us. Everyone has their own separate view, no longer sharing the same experience. Most likely, we'll use this media alone in our homes instead of going out with friends and family, opting to be "social" by playing online in separate homes across the country with people we may or may not have ever met. Will this be yet another physically disconnecting experience in space and attention?

We should not ignore the social effects of our media and just "let it play out," knowing most creators/publishers truly only care about taking your money. It's time that we learn to examine the humanity in any technology we create or use. It's time to be thoughtful, and teach responsibility in both usage and creation. As creators, take some time to examine the social effects of VRM, and plan its use responsibly, socially. I'm not talking about the half-social experience of current social media. I'm talking about ways to get people in physical spaces together, sharing experiences. Let's engineer the genre so that it becomes less of a separation medium, and more of a medium that can bring us together.

I'm excited to see what VRM will bring us, and how it ultimately turns out. Do you have any comments on the idea?

Actuator

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Dec 16, 2014

Feedback Loops in Learning