This lesson is in the early stages of development (Alpha version)

Closing the Feedback Loop

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 15 min
Questions
  • Why is it important to cultivate the practice of closing the feedback loop in communities?

Objectives
  • Reflect on the value of closing the feedback loop as part of the feedback cycle practiced by healthy communities.

In the last exercise, you managed to

Also recall that in an ideal feedback cycle,

From the first loop below, Giver of feedback sends message —> receipt of message —> verify understanding

From the second loop, Take action on feedback → convey action to feedback giver → receive further feedback

Up to this point in our feedback cycle, a community member does not yet know how The Carpentries intends to use any feedback they have shared with The Carpentries, if at all. For this reason, if they reads a community-wide request from us asking them to audit the process and give feedback, we anticipate that three things might happen:

Closing the feedback loop is an important exercise that cultivates trust and encourages accountability in open communities. It is a set of steps that outlines what community members should expect once they share some form of feedback. These steps communicate very broadly that ‘you can trust us with your input, and we will in turn act on it in at least one of several ways’. Below are a few examples of instances where closing the feedback loop helped to cultivate trust and opened up avenues for accountability in The Carpentries community:

GROUP DISCUSSION

Working in pairs, and using any two case studies listed in the External Workflows section, identify some of the action points that The Carpentries shared that helped to cultivate trust and close the feedback loop. What other action points would have been good to communicate about?

Key Points

  • Closing the feedback loop is an important exercise that cultivates trust and encourages accountability in communities.