Four weeks ago these students learned ohm's law. Two weeks ago they started to write nodal equations. Last week they were introduced to opamps. So, no, they do "understand" open-loop gain and feedback. My challenge was to use what they barely knew and move them towards an appreciation of what feedback could do at a very basic level. Feedback is not an easy thing to grasp.

I didn't understand feedback until I learned about the complex plane, poles, zeros, root locus, and control theory.

Rick