As a trainer, you will evaluate teachbacks across three dimensions:

1. Command of Content : this category includes all relevant MCAT content and TPR strategies, including their application and execution.
2. Mechanics of Teaching : this category covers particular instructor operations during class (student interaction, pacing, answering questions, slide work, LOL tool use)
3. Presentation and Style : this category covers an instructor’s disposition, enthusiasm, and regard for their students.

   The form you will use to complete this lesson’s assignments is the Master Trainer Prep Activity #1 .

   It’s a simplified evaluation form, and it will be your starting point.

   NOTE: the endnotes (details) on the MCAT Master Training Prep Activity 1 form are substantial! Try not to become overwhelmed; many of the items in the endnotes are unlikely to be applicable in the training videos you will be watching. You’ll see some of these things in the videos, and we’ll talk about others during the training weekend, but we do think about all of these things during a training. All of this will be your job should you get certified as a trainer.

The teachback is the chief instrument we use to learn, practice and evaluate our craft. In essence, a teachback is a role-playing exercise where a trainee is asked to “perform” a particular lesson or section from the manual. The trainer observes, and along with the other trainees plays the role of students in the classroom.

In this lesson, you will focus on just three trainer objectives. Given a trainee’s teachback, trainers must be able to:

• identify discrepancies between candidates’ teachbacks and the performance we require from our instructors
• record those discrepancies
• prioritize those discrepancies.
• The rest of this segment of your prework is intended to help you to develop these skills.

In the tables below we’ve listed some common problematic teacher behaviors. Additionally, each problem is color-coded to denote its gravity.

• Red - Severely detrimental to a student’s understanding of the material, masks or creates other problematic teacher behaviors, and/or challenging to fix quickly.
• Yellow - Moderately detrimental to a student’s understanding of the material, may lead to other problematic teacher behaviors, usually fixed by next teachback.
• Green - Minor problems that are unlikely to cause failure to certify, easy to fix.

Trainers take notes during teachbacks. Why?

1. To record your observations.
   • DO NOT rely on your memory.
2. To organize your observations.
   • Which behaviors have the most impact and should be addressed immediately?
   • Which behaviors are less significant, but nonetheless should be recorded?
3. To measure progress.
   • Has the teacher candidate incorporated your feedback from the last teachback into this one? Or is she making the same mistakes again?
4. You need a written record.
   • Your notes and evaluation forms represent the premises on which you make certification decisions. Both local offices and national content directors read these forms. From time to time, your decisions may be challenged.

In this lesson you will take notes to practice numbers 1 and 2 above. You will practice number 3 at the live training event.

No particular note-recording system is better than another. Find out what best works for you during your video teachback observations.

Below are examples of different note-taking systems:

• Chad Chasteen (LSAT)
  • For each teachback, I take notes in three categories: Content, Presentation, and Boardwork (each with a + column for things I like and a ∆ column for things I want to change). I like to take notes on my laptop while I’m watching teachbacks. Every trainee has their own file with the teachback assignments listed out.
• John Fulmer (GMAT/GRE)
  • I take free form notes during training. This system may not be the best system for new trainers but it works for me. When I first started training I used a more traditional system. Even though I do take free form notes, I do have some structural elements that I always include because they help me to organize my feedback to the trainee. Those elements are called out on my note taking sample. Here is an example of John’s notes .
• Judene Wright (MCAT)
  • I take notes in a sort of ‘freeform style’ jotting down my thoughts as they come to me. If I write something down (something that’s not great) and see it happen a second time, I underline it. A third time and I star it or double underline or circle, and I start to transfer these to the official evaluation sheet. (I take notes by hand, but keep the eval sheet open on my desktop so I can see both it and the classroom at the same time. Then I just type thoughts/notes right into the eval form.) If I see it get fixed later, I put a checkmark and the word “good!” next to it, so I know it was fixed. In looking at these myself, I can see that at first glance they don’t appear organized, but the important stuff is starred or underlined and so it jumps out. I give my feedback primarily off the formal evaluation sheet and double check my notes to make sure I don’t miss anything. Here is an example of Judene’s notes .
• Bethany Blackwell (MCAT)
  • I use a template (posted after my sample notes) that allows me to organize my observations and feedback. Headings identify the training, trainee, and the lecture or passage that was presented. I can quickly highlight the good things a trainee did before detailing places they need to improve when giving feedback. On the left side of the pages I record everything instructors put on the board, or what a student could have written down in their notes. This is important in case there were mistakes that got erased over the course of a teachback. If there are content errors I mark them in a different color, and star that area to draw my attention back since every single content error gets a mention during feedback time. For passage teachbacks I use the content area to make comments about how they handled techniques/strategy for each question. I keep track of how many questions a trainee asks of the class using tick marks under the Style section. The heading breakdown aligns with those on the formal eval sheets, so I’m sure I address each critical area when I give feedback. It’s also easy to transfer comments to the eval forms in a more organized way for trainees to see. After the first day of training, trainees can have my feedback on the eval sheets while I keep my note pages and make a plan for what I need to see from them on the second day. Here is an example of Bethany’s notes .
• Jon Fowler (MCAT)
• I use the MCAT Practice Test Booklet and wet-erase pen for my notes. I like that it has more room than a single sheet of paper and is reusable, and I get to show trainees what the noteboard looks like. At the top I write the trainee’s name, the teachback topic or passage, and the teachback start and end times. I divide each sheet down the middle for positive and negative comments, and down the left edge I write the assessment categories from the evaluation forms. Before teachbacks begin, I give my trainees my spiel about my priorities in assessing their teaching for purposes of certification, but also explain that my main goal is to train them to teach for us, so that my feedback will be oriented toward that goal. This is a reminder to them that we have a common process-oriented goal of making them better teachers, and a reminder to me not to worry about every item on the eval forms when I’m taking notes during their teachbacks. I try to write notes oriented toward what-why-how advice, because this helps me to remember what I felt about what they were doing as opposed simply to what happened. When a trainee finishes a teachback, I ask them how they felt about it, whether anything was unexpected, and then I usually take a couple of minutes to collect my thoughts before giving feedback. During that time I numerically order by importance the three major positives I want to praise, and the three major behaviors that require correction or improvement. One nice thing about training online is that there’s a record of each slide and no erasing of the board, so I am able to worry less about tracking boardwork. Indeed, if a trainee makes a mistake while marking a slide but corrects it during the flow of class, I’ll either say nothing or note that as a positive. Here is an example of Jon’s notes .
• Note-taking TEMPLATE you might use

You can see that everyone has a different style, some more formal than others. There is no one “right” way to take notes. The important takeaway here is that any efficient method of taking notes that effectively captures and organizes the salient points you want to make in your feedback, is fine. You will develop your own style/format with experience.

Click HERE to launch the quiz. You must score 100% on this quiz, but you may take it as many times as you like to achieve that score.

Master Training Prep Activity #1, Part A

In Part A you will watch generic trainer example videos and take notes to practice the skills you’ve just learned. Generic videos are generic in the sense that they do not contain content errors… it would be unrealistic to expect, say, a Physics Master Training candidate to be able to correctly identify Biology content errors. However, the videos do contain several other common errors seen in teacher candidates. Science candidates only need to watch the science videos (lecture and passage), CARS candidates only need to watch the CARS videos (lecture and passage).

You will then compare your notes to the sample notes that follow each video. You will also look at a correctly filled out MCAT MT Activity 1 Form for each video. This is a simplified evaluation form to start you off in the process of recording and prioritizing errors.

• Watch the generic trainer example videos (either science or CARS) and take notes to practice the skills you’ve just learned.
• Open the sample notes documents that follow each video, and compare your notes to the trainer’s notes.
• Open and view the correctly filled out MCAT MT Activity 1 Form for each video.t

IMPORTANT NOTE: Over the last few years we have modified the way we present passages in class to focus more on presenting strategies during passages and to ensure consistency in strategies across our MCAT subjects. As a trainer, you will be expected to be very familiar with how to properly present a passage in class, and to be very familiar with the appropriate strategies to use. We have several resources to help you make sure your skills are solid in this area:

• The MCAT Science Strategy Summaries document
• ICC Instructor Solutions documents (especially pages 1-8)
• Videos of master trainers presenting passages

The MCAT Science Strategy Summaries doc and the ICC Instructor Solutions docs are available to you on the Resources page. Sample videos are in the MCAT LOL Teacher Access Item. It is strongly recommended that you download and read these documents and watch the videos BEFORE you begin Prep Activity 1A. You will be expected to train to these standards.

One more thing: All of the videos have a little “dead space” at the beginning, where the slides are being loaded and the teacher is getting ready. Thus, for each video, we have indicated the time stamp at which you should start watching.

Master Training - Prep Activity #1, Part B

In Part B, you will watch (for your subject ONLY) six subject-specific videos with errors, three lecture videos and three passage videos. We recommend that you watch the videos (listed below) in order. As in Part A, you will take notes throughout each subject-specific teachback. Finally, you will fill out the MCAT Master Training Prep Activity 1 form for each video (download the form from the Resources page). Submit the forms (one per teachback, six total) to your Ubertrainer by the date indicated in the syllabus. Specific steps are below:

1. Watch your six subject-specific videos. Take notes for each video.
2. Download and fill out the MCAT MT Activity 1 Form for each video. You probably want to do this one at a time, i.e., fill out the form for Video 1 before you watch Video 2, etc.
3. Save the file with the name “MCAT Prep 1B [your subject] [lecture #/passage #] [your last name].pdf”, (e.g., MCAT Prep 1B Biology lecture 1 Wright.pdf or MCAT Prep 1B CARS passage 1 Wooddell.pdf.)
4. Submit (via email) the completed forms to your Ubertrainer.

Giving Feedback

It’s difficult to be perfect right out of the gate. Feedback is the instrument through which we guide and shape a performance that’s imperfect.

When a teacher candidate has a performance discrepancy (which is almost always), a trainer provides feedback. If in their next performance the candidate incorporates the feedback, and the discrepancy is no longer visible, the candidate succeeds. A candidate fails when s/he is unable to incorporate feedback before the end of their performance opportunities.

This activity builds from the last one (Master Training Prep Activity 1). Given the identified, recorded, and prioritized discrepancies of a teacher-candidate’s performance, trainers must be able to:

• Craft feedback, and
• Deliver that feedback appropriately.

This lesson will focus primarily on crafting feedback and a little bit on delivering the feedback appropriately. We will work more on delivery, as well as putting everything together (identifying and prioritizing discrepancies, crafting accurate feedback on the spot, and delivering that feedback appropriately) in Part 6 and at the live Master Training event.

Overview: Elements of Good Feedback

Now, it’s time to take a better look at each of the four elements of good feedback. The table below provides an overview; each of the four parts will be discussed in more detail below.

Details: Identify the Problem by Describing the Behavior

We’ve discussed above some of the nuanced differences between identifying and describing performance discrepancies. The first step to crafting good feedback is to describe errors in a concrete and constructive way. Use specific examples from the trainee’s teachback to help the trainee understand exactly what you are talking about, and to connect your feedback back to his or her own performance. “You are boring” comes across as a personal attack, and doesn’t provide much useful information. “Your tone of voice had little inflection, and you did not indicate by pointing to the board what a student should be paying attention to. Nothing jumped out in the presentation as being interesting or important.” already begins to let the trainee know what he or she did wrong and how it can be better.

Details: Explain the Effects of the Behavior

Every performance discrepancy has one or more consequences. The second element of feedback is explaining those consequences. ‘Explaining consequences’ is answering the question: “Why do I need to perform this way?” It should never be a mystery why we want future teachers to adhere to specific performance parameters.

Here are four performance discrepancies and their common consequences (note: there can be many more! These are just a few examples):

• Slow pace
• The teacher probably won’t finish the class. The teacher might start to pick and choose what parts of the material he or she thinks is most important to cover. As a result, students will not be exposed to all of the material. Additionally, the students could become bored.
• Writes very little on the board or does not use the LOL tools effectively
• Students who have a more visual learning style might find it difficult to follow the lesson. As a result, some students might not improve as much as they could. Students who come late or whose attention wavers will either be lost or forced to ask questions about material that has already been covered. Students will not have good notes to review the material from.
• Asks only memory questions
• Students who don’t have the background to answer memory-based questions will not be able to participate in the class and may become bored or disenfranchised. No students will have the opportunity to practice MCAT-style reasoning (the MCAT is not really a test of memory). They will have less success answering actual MCAT questions and scores will not improve.
• Teaches with very little energy
• Students will think that the teacher isn’t really interested in what he’s teaching. If students perceive that the teacher isn’t interested, then their interest will wane, and they have little desire to study the material or try new techniques. Scores will not improve.

Details: Offer Solutions

It isn’t fair to tell a trainee that there are problems with their teachback without then offering suggestions for how to fix those problems. Effective solutions have the following characteristics:

• Specific: Just as descriptions of behavior need to be specific in order to be useful, so too do solutions need a fair amount of specificity if a trainee is going to be able to follow your advice. In fact, the root cause of vague solutions is often a failure to describe specific behaviors.
• Actionable: Describe specific actions that trainees can take to correct a problem.
• Provide a standard for Evaluation: Offer very clear and achievable goals for the next teachback.

Details: Provide Insight into Certification

‘Providing insight into Certification’ answers the teacher-candidate question: “Where do I stand?” How well or how poorly a candidate is performing should not be a mystery, and not being certified should never come as a surprise. Not only is that unfair to the trainee, it could have legal ramifications for the company. Most importantly, a trainer upholds the reputation of The Princeton Review.

In any training, a candidate will perform several teachbacks. Initially, your goal is mostly to help candidates improve. Soon, however, you must begin to consider your certification decision. And you must make your consideration visible.

Consider these three phrases as providing insight into certification

Teacher vs. Trainer

As a teacher, your job is to try to save every student. Trainers, however, can’t save every trainee. Some nice, bright, and eager folks who attend your training just won’t meet our standards. Sending such a person into our classroom would be a disaster. We’d fail our students and damage the reputation of our business.

Quiz: Discrepancy vs. Feedback, Lecture

Click HERE to launch the “Discrepancy vs. Feedback, Lecture” quiz. For each of the given statements, indicate “Right” if it is an example of good feedback that could be given, or “Wrong” if it is merely an observation of a discrepancy. You must score 100% on this quiz, but you may take it as many times as you like to achieve that score.

Quiz: Discrepancy vs. Feedback, Passage

Click HERE to launch the “Discrepancy vs. Feedback, Passage” quiz. For each of the given statements, indicate “Right” if it is an example of good feedback that could be given, or “Wrong” if it is merely an observation of a discrepancy. You must score 100% on this quiz, but you may take it as many times as you like to achieve that score.

Master Training - Prep Activity #2, Part A

In Master Training Prep Activity #1, Part A, you watched generic videos of flawed teachbacks and took notes. You then compared your notes to the trainers’ sample notes and observed a correctly filled out MCAT MT Activity #1 form. In Master Training Prep Activity #2, Part A, you will rewatch the generic videos (have your notes from Prep Activity #1 handy, or retake the notes), then watch a video of a trainer giving feedback on that teachback. Finally, you will observe a correctly filled out Master Trainer Prep Activity 2 form for each of the videos.

• Rewatch the generic flawed lecture and passage teachback videos. Have your notes from Prep Activity #1 handy, or retake the notes.
• Watch the video of a trainer giving feedback on that teachback. See if you can determine why the feedback is good. Pay attention to the parts of the feedback. What are they? What are the goals of each part? How were the goals accomplished?
• Open and observe the correctly filled out MCAT MT Activity 2 Form for each video.

Master Training - Prep Activity #2, Part B

In Part B, you will watch (or rewatch) the six subject-specific videos with errors, three lecture videos and three passage videos. As before, we recommend that you watch the videos (listed below) in order. For each video, take notes, or review the notes you took in Master Training Prep Activity 1. Finally, you will fill out the MCAT Master Training Activity 2 Form for each video (downloadable from the Resources page). Submit the forms (one per teachback, six total) to your Ubertrainer by the date indicated in the syllabus.

Specific steps are below:

1. Rewatch the six videos for your subject. Take notes for each video, or review your notes taken in Master Training Prep Activity 1.
2. Download and fill out the MCAT MT Activity 2 Form for each video. You probably want to do this one at a time, i.e., fill out the form for Video 1 before you watch Video 2, etc.
3. Save the file with the name “MCAT Prep 2B [subject] [lecture #/passage #] [your last name].pdf”, (e.g., MCAT Prep 2B Biology lecture 1 Wright.pdf or MCAT Prep 2B CARS passage 1 Wooddell.pdf.)
4. Submit (via email) the completed forms to your Ubertrainer.

“Template” for Delivering Feedback

There is an art to delivering effective feedback. You don’t want to overwhelm your candidate with all the bad stuff they did, so that they think they are the worst teacher ever. You don’t want to sugar-coat your feedback so that the candidate thinks they are the best teacher ever (especially when there are real problems that could prevent certification). You want to keep your feedback organized, so that it’s easy for the candidate to understand and remember. AND you have to do all of this “on-the-spot”, with little time to think about it.

SO... we’ve provided an “outline” that you can use to help organize your feedback:

1. Start with something positive. Even if the candidate delivered the WORST teachback EVER, find something positive to say (e.g., “you have nice handwriting” or “good effort”). Most candidates will have at least a few positive things they’ve done. List out the good things and give some specific examples where they did this.
2. Summarize the bad things they’ve done.
3. Go through each bad thing and provide details and examples, as well as actionable solutions. Reteach if necessary.
4. Summarize the bad things again, using language that makes it clear where they stand in regard to certification.
5. Finish with a positive statement, e.g., “keep up the good stuff you are doing with boardwork and confidence, and work on the other issues we discussed”.

   Like this:

   • List of positive things with examples
   • List of negative things
   • Negative thing #1 with details, examples, solutions, reteaching
   • Negative thing #2 with details, examples, solutions, reteaching
   • Negative thing #3 with details, examples, solutions, reteaching
   • (Repeat for as many issues as you need to)
   • Summary of bad things using certification language
   • Final positive statement (summary of positive things)

We’ll talk a little bit more about this in Part 6, and a lot about this at the live training weekend. These are just things to consider for now... we’ll spend a lot of time practicing this at the live training weekend. However, with this in mind, you might want to go back to watch the feedback videos and see how this is incorporated.

Viewing the LOL Evaluation Forms

In Master Training Prep Activities 1 and 2, you took notes and filled out simplified evaluation forms (MCAT MT Activity 1 form and MCAT MT Activity 2 form). When running a training, you will be expected to use the official LOL Lecture and Passage Evaluation forms. These are best filled out while the teacher candidate is presenting their lecture or passage, so that you can (a) use the evaluation form to help craft your feedback, and (b) have an immediate written record of the teachback. These evaluation forms can be sent to the trainees so that they can use them to improve their next presentations.

The LOL Lecture and Passage Evaluation forms are considerably more extensive than the MCAT MT Activity forms you filled out earlier. In this section, you will first compare your MCAT MT Activity forms for a specific lecture and passage to the correct MCAT MT Activity forms for that lecture and passage. You will then view the actual LOL Evaluation forms for that lecture and passage, and consider how the observations on the Activity forms could transfer to the observations on the LOL Evaluation forms.

Step 1

Download the correctly filled out MCAT MT Activity 1 and 2 forms for your subject below. Compare them to your filled out Prep Activity 1 and 2 forms for those lectures.

• Biology Activity 1 - Lecture 1
• Biology Activity 1 - Passage 1
• Biology Activity 2 - Lecture 1
• Biology Activity 2 - Passage 1
• Gen Chem Activity 1 - Lecture 3
• Gen Chem Activity 1 - Passage 3
• Gen Chem Activity 2 - Lecture 3
• Gen Chem Activity 2 - Passage 3
• OChem Activity 1 - Lecture 3
• OChem Activity 1 - Passage 1
• OChem Activity 2 - Lecture 3
• OChem Activity 2 - Passage 1
• Physics Activity 1 - Lecture 1
• Physics Activity 1 - Passage 1
• Physics Activity 2 - Lecture 1
• Physics Activity 2 - Passage 1
• Psych/Soc Activity 1 - Lecture 1
• Psych/Soc Activity 1 - Passage 1
• Psych/Soc Activity 2 - Lecture 1
• Psych/Soc Activity 2 - Passage 1

Step 2

Compare the MCAT MT Activity 1 and 2 forms above to a correctly filled out MCAT Science/CARS Lecture Eval Form LiveOnline and to a correctly filled out MCAT Science/CARS Passage Eval Form LiveOnline. Notice how the discrepancies and feedback on the MCAT MT Activity 1 and 2 forms translates to the evaluations and comments on the MCAT Science/CARS Lecture and Passage Eval Form LiveOnline.

• Biology LiveOnline Eval Form - Lecture 1
• Biology LiveOnline Eval Form - Passage 1
• Gen Chem LiveOnline Eval Form - Lecture 3
• Gen Chem LiveOnline Eval Form - Passage 3
• OChem LiveOnline Eval Form - Lecture 3
• OChem LiveOnline Eval Form - Passage 1
• Physics LiveOnline Eval Form - Lecture 1
• Physics LiveOnline Eval Form - Passage 1
• Psych/Soc LiveOnline Eval Form - Lecture 1
• Psych/Soc LiveOnline Eval Form - Passage 1

The links to the videos are here for your convenience, in case you want to watch them again:

• Video - Biology Lecture 1 - RNA Genomes (starting at 1:10)
• Video - Biology Passage 1 - ICC Bio Passage 1 (starting at 0:32)
• Video - Gen Chem Lecture 3 - Rate Laws (starting at 0:54)
• Video - Gen Chem Passage 3 - ICC Gchem Passage 13 (starting at 0:55)
• Video - OChem Lecture 3 - Amino Acid Acid/Base Chemistry (starting at 0:50)
• Video - Ochem Passage 1 - ICC Ochem Passage 1 (starting at 1:00)
• Video - Physics Lecture 1 - Potential Energy (starting at 0:40)
• Video - Physics Passage 1 - ICC Physics Passage 5 (starting at 0:25)
• Video - Psych/Soc Lecture 1 - Sociological Theories (starting at 1:05)
• Video - Psych/Soc Passage 1 - ICC Psych/Soc Passage 10 (starting at 1:00)
• Video - CARS Lecture 1 - Active Reading (starting at 1:30)
• Video - CARS Passage 1 - ICC CARS Passage 7 (starting at 1:55)

Filling out the LOL Evaluation Forms

In this section you will practice filling out the official LOL Evaluation forms while watching a specific lecture and passage for your subject. Remember that you can download clean copies of the LOL Evaluation forms from the Resources Page.

Step 1

Review your MCAT MT Activity 1 form and MCAT MT Activity 2 form for the lectures and passages below.

Step 2

Click on the links below to rewatch the videos of your subject’s lecture and passage. As you watch the videos, take notes (if necessary) and fill out the LOL evaluation forms. Remember, you want to get into the practice of filling out the evaluation forms as you are watching the teachbacks. Save these official LOL evaluation forms as “LOL official eval form [subject] [lecture#/passage#] [your last name].docx”, e.g., “LOL official eval form Physics Passage 2 Fowler.docx”

• Video - Biology Lecture 2 - Resting and Action Potential (starting at 0:44)
• Video - Biology Passage 3 - ICC Bio Passage 17 (starting at 1:18)
• Video - Gen Chem Lecture 1 - Buffers (starting at 0:52)
• Video - Gen Chem Passage 2 - ICC Gchem Passage 6 (starting at 1:02)
• Video - Ochem Lecture 2 - Imine/Enamine Formation (starting at 1:02)
• Video - Ochem Passage 3 - ICC Ochem Passage 7 (starting at 1:01)
• Video - Physics Lecture 3 - Photoelectric Effect (starting at 0:40)
• Video - Physics Passage 2 - ICC Physics Passage 11 (starting at 0:50)
• Video - Psych/Soc Lecture 2 - Class 3: Self (starting at 1:05)
• Video - Psych/Soc Passage 3 - ICC Psych/Soc Passage 3 (starting at 1:05)
• Video - CARS Lecture 2 - Attractors (starting at 1:20)
• Video - CARS Passage 2 - ICC CARS Passage 16 (starting at 0:40)

“Template” for Delivering Feedback

As discussed in Part 5, there is an art to delivering effective feedback. This is important enough to repeat: you don’t want to overwhelm your candidate with all the bad stuff they did, so that they think they are the worst teacher ever, and you don’t want to sugar-coat your feedback so that the candidate thinks they are the best teacher ever (especially when there are real problems that could prevent certification). You want to keep your feedback organized, so that it’s easy for the candidate to understand and remember. AND you have to do all of this “on-the-spot”, with little time to think about it.

SO... we’ve provided an “outline” that you can use to help organize your feedback:

1. Start with something positive. Even if the candidate delivered the WORST teachback EVER, find something positive to say (e.g., “you have nice handwriting” or “good effort”). Most candidates will have at least a few positive things they’ve done. List out the good things and give some specific examples where they did this.
2. Summarize, briefly, the bad things they’ve done.
3. Go through each bad thing and provide details and examples, as well as actionable solutions. Reteach if necessary. Generally it’s a good idea to start with the most significant errors/discrepancies and move through to the least significant errors/discrepancies.
4. Summarize the bad things again , using certification language (language that makes it clear where they stand in regards to certification).
5. Finish with a positive statement , usually a summary of their positives. For example, “keep up the good stuff you are doing with boardwork and confidence, and work on the other issues we discussed”.
   • Like this:
   • List of positive things with examples
   • List of negative things
   • Negative thing #1 with details, examples, solutions, reteaching
   • Negative thing #2 with details, examples, solutions, reteaching
   • Negative thing #3 with details, examples, solutions, reteaching
   • (Repeat for as many issues as you need to)
   • Summary of bad things using certification language
   • Final positive statement (summary of positives)

NOTE

a helpful mnemonic for giving feedback on the negative thing is IDEGS:

• I = Identify the problem
• D = Describe with examples from their teaching
• E = Explain the effect on the students
• G = Give an actionable solution
• S = Summarize using certification language

For example:

• “You didn’t engage the class consistently during your discussion of passage questions. In Q1 and Q3 you did reasonably well, but there was no engagement in Q2 or Q5 and in Q4 you asked open-ended questions. The problem with not engaging the class is that you aren’t helping the students learn how to follow, through simple logical questions, the path to the solution. For each question, think about how you would solve it, and break that down into steps… what did you think of first? Then what? Then what? Could you eliminate stuff along the way? Turn these steps into questions for your students. In order to certify you I’ll need to see consistent, effective engaging of the class on every question.”

IMPORTANT: We walk a fine line between positive and negative feedback. If a candidate has serious issue, they need to know it, but we don’t want to destroy their morale either. Consider these closing statements:

“Keep up the good boardwork and color coordination. Work on asking more engaging questions and make sure you are following the syllabus.”

• This might be for a candidate who is sort of medium. Not awesome, but trainable. This is a good final statement that mentions the positives, but doesn’t sound like they are perfect yet.

“I can see that you are trying and that’s good. You’ll need to make significant improvements, so you have your work cut out for you.”

• This might be for a candidate who gave a really poor teachback. You don’t want to tell them they were horrible, so ‘you’ll need to make significant improvements’ is a good way to phrase this.

“You’re doing really great, and that was a good lecture! You have to fix those content errors and engage the class, and you’ll be good to go!”

• This is an example of a POOR final statement. A candidate with content errors and who is not engaging the class is not “doing really great” and that was not “a good lecture”. This person is likely to be confused and think they are doing well, when in reality, they won’t certify with content errors and a lack of student engagement.

To Organize Your Thoughts

Eventually, with practice, you’ll be able to organize your thoughts quickly and efficiently before getting up to give oral feedback. When you’re first starting out, it can be helpful to formally organize them. Use this document to help: To Organize Your Thoughts . Fill this form out for both the lecture and the passage video you just watched. Use your filled out LOL Evaluation forms and your notes to help. Save these organizer forms as “Feedback Notes Organizer [subject] [lecture#/passage#] [your last name].docx”, e.g., “Feedback Notes Organizer Gen Chem Lecture 3 Chow.docx”.

Putting it All Together

In this final step, you will type up the oral feedback you would give to a trainee, using the official LOL evaluation forms you filled out above. You will do this separately for the lecture and passage.

Step 1

Review all of your notes, MCAT MT Activity forms, LOL Evaluation forms, and Feedback Notes Organizer forms for the videos (lecture and passage for your subject) linked below.

Step 2

Type up the feedback you would give to these candidates. Follow the template/outline above. Consider all of the things you have learned: severity of different errors, using examples from their teaching, providing good solutions, certification language, etc. Keep your feedback organized. Make sure to type the lecture feedback separately from the passage feedback. In an actual training, these things are separated.

Step 3

Save the files with the name “MCAT MT Final activity [subject] [lecture #/passage #] [your last name].docx”, (e.g., MCAT MT Final activity Biology lecture 2 Wright.docx or MCAT MT Final activity CARS passage 2 Wooddell.docx).

Step 4

Submit (via email) all six files to your Ubertrainer (two official LOL evaluation forms, two Feedback Notes Organizer forms, and two typed up oral feedback documents).