PDFE #13

When receiving extrinsic feedback it is key for the instructor to insure his feedback is doing what it is supposed to. For this PDFE I observed a Berry College men’s soccer practice. During the time of which I observed the players were practicing defended shooting. I did notice motivation and reinforcement. I did not notice any information being giving or dependence upon this information. Which I feel is expect because it is a college team who should have learned the skill well and would not need too much of nor depend upon extrinsic feedback.
Motivation is what drives an athlete to play harder for someone or something. For this reason it’s an important facet to give in feedback. I saw this in the practice after many drills and the players would start to get tired. The coach would motivate the players to push further to get better at the skill they were practicing.
Reinforcement is also key in feedback. I saw examples of this when the players would successfully complete a task. Whether it be the attacker scoring a goal, the defender stopping the attacker, or the goalie stopping a shot, the coach would positively enforce the successful completion of the skill. I think this can tie into motivation as well. In positively reinforcing the successful completion of the skill, he can also motivate the players to become even better and play harder.
I did not see any representation of the information aspect of feedback. There was one occasion in which there was some information feedback. After the attacker struggled on consecutive attempts the coach brought him over and reminded him of his fundamentals, reminding him to better set his feet on the shot for better accuracy. I think one would see much more of this in situations with less skilled players. On a college team one would expect that the players have the skills well practiced.
The last aspect was not present at all in the practice I attended. This is dependence on the feedback. Because the participants were well skilled they knew what it took to successfully completely the skill and did not need to rely on anyone else to tell them if they were correctly doing it. However, an example of dependence would be someone learning the fundamentals of pitching a baseball. Many times it is hard to know if your full motion is balanced and correct because it is possible to throw a successful pitch without a fully perfected motion. One could become dependent on the feedback given.
Feedback is key to learning. However, if one becomes dependent it can severely halt ones learning experience. As a coach it is important to learn how to properly give feedback so that students learn how to intrinsically give feedback and learn how to properly perform a skill