Feedback forms can come in several structures, and one interesting structure I have noticed is the 3,2,1 way:

3 things I have learnt from this workshop...
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________

2 things I can put into practise after this workshop...
____________________________
____________________________

1 thing would like to know more about...
___________________________

--
I dunno if there is any scientific reason behind this approach... but it seems to be a werid way to get feedback.

First you ask the dude to tell you a lot about what he has learnt from you, then you expect him to cite what he can apply in reality and then you want him to say how to improve the course.

The trainers are really facing a big ego problem here. They need affirmation that we know the stuff, assurance that we can apply the stuff and then a bit of feedback. Note the numbers...They had seemingly reduced the number of points from the first one to the second one, for the sake of giving lesser room for application of the theories. And then the last one... for the sake of getting little improvement change. As in, 'there would be a necessity for applications outside the workshop, so I must put in some space for the pupils to write. But no need for so much, because they would have learnt more. And I'm good enough... so one improvement for me would do.'

Perhaps thats the way to get 'good feedback'.

But of course, thats only a marketing gimmick and a show of business stratergy (perhaps) or maybe just some sort of reinforcement pill for the participants to consume so that they can go out to the world and make it big.

Feedback is often belittled today. Depending on the different sorts of feedback that concerns an individual, a feedback would determine a reaction, give an influence and impart a new awareness to the victim. It obviously is not always something to be desired, especially when its something where negetivity is actually considered good. Human beings hate stuff to be like that, and they shun it, so now, the hype about self-esteem has gandered more cookie points, pleaing for people to indirectly not accept feedback. (You can do it! Believe in yourself!) Of course, there are those from the same school that says they believe in constructive critism and perhaps even constructive pessimism. The logic of reverse psychology is also welcomed to enter this roaral of feedback. One thing about feedback, is that it is an initiation for the other party to change. It may not be direct nor personal, but still, the burn that it inflicts would be good enough to be named a 'provokation'.

Statistical, Paper-wise Feedback
As the topic had rocketed off from.. the sort of forms and surveys and other sort of stuff in the same family. To notice that my friends (and probaly everyone else who goes to school) have nicknamed these stuff as 'bullshit' is a perfect feedback to show how reliable a feedback would really be. Sometimes, they are useful, especially when one is drawing conclusions and generalisations on the large scale. But its accuracy is sometimes in question.... and this is something that should be looked into, especially when most psychological investigations (especially the behaviourists) take such a form. There are the usual, cliched and talked-about problems with these sheets of papers, and not much can be gathered. The way the paper can be structured is also a problem. ( 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Agree, Strongly Disagree... etc. ?) I think, there should be a indepth psychology of feedback. The average human would have some sort of bias to feedback and depending on certain readings, there would be affected readings.

___Types of Feedback

Verbal and Essay-answer-style Feedback
Under this field, we would have the stuff like critisims, comments, written/spoken advice, opinion-wise judgements etc. Nowadays, it would be hard to get geninue feedback because of the two-way problem: Your ego and the person's cowardice. (Or if your not a socially accpeted someone, exaggerated remarks at your flaws.) I still do not know the model answer on what to say when a girl asks opinion of how she looks: its really a complicated matrix where I'm wondering if flirting is concerned, whose ego is at work of inflating/deflating and basically what emotion to exhale. If positivity should be used, what to accompany it? If negetivity were to be used, what to restore a correct standing? But then again, I don't think its my fault when these sort of somewhat useless, rethorical or motive-wise questions come into play. Doing feedback on such terms are hard for some people, basically because when such feedback is asked of that someone, he would go through a process of identifying the new or special feature of the item his feedbacking on, while this is going on, he would probaly be having a thought process of comparison with things relating to the item. And comparison means telling the difference. And people like me, can't tell the difference between the laksa at clementi or at katong. Unless there are really distinct differences, or unless there is a special attraction to a particular attribute, difference and therefore relevant feedback, is hard to guage.

Then theres the thing about leaving comments on blogs or throwing in comments towards forums etc. I applude such ideas, because forums and comment discussions are really good and interesting. I used to enjoy the gamefaqs forum board for the various RPGs last time and even had in depth physics discussions concering time, space, dimensions and chrono trigger characters. The other good thing is the cool civilised bullying one can thrust out over the keyboard. In the comfort of your home, the other guy can't do anything to you and you can just state your stands and fight back with the power of words. Like an elections, people would come in to support you and aid with their own posts. Very cool.

Assumed Feedback
Obviously, assumed feedback links to the previous sort of feedback. But without considering verbal and essay-style stuff, assumed feedback can come from body language, first impressions, people influence, circumstance installations etc. However, all these usually are ingredients together with the bulk of verbal and essay-style feedback that paint a mental picture of the other group's/individual's proflie or intention. This stuff is pretty self-explanatory really, someone does something, like for instance says 'hi'. You immediately jump into assesment mode and think that the person implies something... it can be sub-concious and depending on your fuse, maybe you won't have such a big and obvious reaction. There have been books talking about the power of such assumed feedbacks and actually teaching you the science/art behind performing such.... which denies the facts behind how its dangerous and not be taken so literally. (your assuming anyway) But maybe, the books have this disclaimer in it as well.

Official/Office, Political, double-edged sword style Feedback Besides the political cartoons, commentaries, forum page articles and mind games looming around, the feedback around these sort of stuff are somewhat fuzzy sometimes and the guy who said 'despot' at the forum on question to LKY had gave feedback that it was hard to give feedback. Well... I'm not really a totally fantatical devotee to the PAP, but about the articles not reaching the Straits Times, there can be several reasons. Looking at the way the dude attacks the problem, his sort of a civilised rebel type and that should be sufficient feedback of what sort of articles his writing to the newspaper. The point he seems to be trying to bring across is the the newspaper is doing censorship. And thats... well... Straits Times is a pro-people not pro-government paper, i.e. government doesn't tells it what to ban(Skeptics may think theres the underground, ahem... perhaps i guess) and even so, it needs to mantain a form of political-correctness. I mean, why the heck do you want to block out new opinions? Two reasons, firstly, because there needs to be a degree of conservity, because singapore has a fragile society and cannot insult/infume others easily. What comes out in print can be direct evidence against singapore, and stories of backstabbing, betrayal, and politics(well..) can be told from here; secondly, because theres not enough space to print, pirority of news articles count. But thats just a something I was wondering about... I didnt exactly catch the whole dialouge session between them.

___The Use of Feedback
The logical reason behind feedback is for getting a change in stratergy, and depending on the sort of feedback and the way you get the feedback, the sort of reaction you would be provoked into. Evangelism would consist of the gandering of every sort of feedback as well, doing so effectively might ensure successful evangelism, but then again, it depends on how the success of evangelism is measured. 'Effectiveness' could be a better term. However, the logical reason of feedback is not consistently recieved as the usual reason of feedback. No one admits it, but sometimes its just used as a front, as an ego booster or politically-correct move. Official feedback is sometimes just the right thing to do, and only those that really have the desire to improve can seem to stomach the feedback.(even so, their emotions that might erupt from the given feedback.)

But people who don't want to change at all, probaly wouldn't see feedback as something to use. They might just see it as... something that exists. For nothing.

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