Closing the Feedback Loop: How Calibrate + PracticeSmart Support Students

In clinical education, we frequently discuss the importance of “closing the feedback loop”—ensuring that learners not only receive feedback but also act on it, adapt, improve, and reflect on their performance. Unfortunately, many systems tend to stop after the feedback is given. However, tools like Calibrate and PracticeSmart provide educators with concrete data and a structured pathway to guide learners from insight to action.
 
Below is an overview of how these tools can be integrated into a feedback-loop process to help identify, support, and track students who may need additional assistance.

Where am I now?

Calibrate is designed as an assessment for learning, not just of learning. Students complete an early and a late version of the assessment during a clerkship or course. Each question asks students not only for an answer but also for their certainty about it. That combination of accuracy + certainty helps uncover not just knowledge gaps, but misaligned metacognitive judgment (overconfidence, underconfidence).

From the faculty side, Calibrate offers dashboards that surface:

• Preparedness for Clerkship via the Learning Progress Indicator (red/yellow/green) which shows how students compare relative to peers.
• Alignment of accuracy and certainty through the Clinical Learning Calibration. Trends across systems, discipline areas, or clerkships enable faculty to identify which topics or students are at risk.

This layer gives both students and faculty a shared, data-anchored starting point: “Here’s where you are” — including blind spots that purely correct/incorrect scoring would miss.

So, where to next?

Once the diagnostic is complete, faculty or coaches can step in to help the learner interpret the data and plan. This is where the feedback loop moves from static feedback to interactive growth.

• Aquifer provides a coaching script to structure conversations around Calibrate results: ask students to identify strengths and gaps, prioritize, and plan SMART steps.
• In the coaching session, the faculty member can refer to specific Calibrate items (or groups of items) that show misalignment, and explore why—e.g. “You were highly certain but incorrect here; what thinking might have led you astray?”
• Use the data to set actionable goals: for example, spend targeted time on cases in topic X, revisit content in a structured way, or engage in question practice in area Y.

Because Calibrate assessments are linked to Aquifer case content and teaching points, students are directly connected to content that can support their learning.

Acting on feedback

Calibrate is a useful tool for uncovering strengths and weaknesses.  When paired with PracticeSmart, the student-directed clinical reasoning question bank, the student is empowered to dive deeper into their gaps and uncover more detailed information. Students are encouraged to deploy PracticeSmart as part of their action plan. PracticeSmart is…

• …a question bank and quiz generator built on Aquifer’s validated content.
• …designed to be used as self-assessment at the end of an Aquifer case or via the quiz generator to create targeted quizzes in specific disciplines or topic areas.
• …intended to encourage metacognition by using certainty ratings that reveal not just what they know but how well they know it.
• …a safe space for students since faculty do not see individual student question-level performance.

Monitoring, Follow-up, and Loop Closure

The feedback loop can be closed by revisiting and monitoring improvement.

• Faculty can return to Calibrate’s “late” assessment to measure growth, or compare early vs. late performance within a rotation to see if interventions worked.
• Reports in Calibrate (or the new educator dashboards) allow tracking of students flagged as red/yellow and whether their trajectories improved.
• Educators can analyze cohort-level data to identify curricular gaps: for example, if many students struggle in a certain topic, the curriculum or case selection can be adjusted.

Over time, the system becomes a continuous improvement loop: assessment → reflection/coaching → practice → reassessment → revised goals.  

Practical Tips & Considerations

• Timing matters: Administer Calibrate early enough to allow meaningful remediation and follow-up, and late enough to capture learning progress.
• Close the loop early and often: Frequent feedback, coaching, and practice sessions work better than one large feedback event at the end.
• Faculty development is key: Coaches need training to interpret reports, frame feedback in a supportive coaching model (e.g. Ask-Discuss-Ask), and keep conversations focused on growth.
• Use dashboards for scalability: Educator dashboards with Calibrate and PracticeSmart data support monitoring learning 

The feedback loop in medical education involves more than just giving comments—it’s about ensuring learners understand where they are, acting on guidance, and evolving over time. By combining Calibrate’s rich data with PracticeSmart’s self-directed question practice and wrapping both in coaching and monitoring, programs can operationalize a robust closed-loop feedback system. Students become more self-aware, coaches more targeted, and curricula more responsive — ultimately supporting learners who need extra help to reach their full potential.

Ready to implement these insights? Schedule a curricular consult with our team to explore how performance data can directly inform your program’s next steps.