Best Free MOOCs In Business In September

Giving Helpful Feedback

School: University of Colorado

Platform:  Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: September 11, 2017 (5 Weeks Long)

Workload:  1 Hour Per Week

Instructor: Tracy Jennings

Credentials: A senior instructor, Jennings teaches courses in employee relations, hiring, employee retention, team building, organizational behavior, and social responsibility. Holding an MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Jennings earned the school’s Joseph L. Frascona Teaching Excellence Award in 2013.

Graded: To earn a passing mark, students must complete all graded assignments.

Description: When it comes to a problem employee, you have two choices as a manager: You can ignore the behavior and hope it goes away or you can give feedback. As you can imagine, many managers choose the former and dread the latter. Let’s face it: Feedback is uncomfortable for both parties. As a manager, you risk the wrong words or tone making the matter worse. For employees, feedback means your job is suddenly less secure…regardless of extenuating circumstances. How can managers boost performance without stirring up fear or defensiveness?

In this course, students will learn scientifically-proven ways to coach employees in ways that motivates them to change behaviors without leaving them anxious and resentful. Students will evaluate strategies in various scenarios that create agreement, reinforce learning, and ultimately improve performance. Over five weeks, students will study both positive and negative feedback — and when each is the best course of action. Even more, they will look at situations where feedback didn’t work to discuss possible reasons why and offer alternatives that may work better in the future.

Review: “This course was very informative and gave great examples of how and when to use feedback in a very specific way to encourage positive behaviors. It showed you how to give negative and positive feedback, when you want to use those types of feedback and how to give feedback in a way that it can be heard by the other person.” For additional reviews, click here.

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.