A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education by Heather Fry Steve Ketteridge & Stephanie Marshall

Author:Heather Fry, Steve Ketteridge & Stephanie Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317650218
Publisher: Routledge

Growing class sizes often lead to heavier academic workloads and more lag in the system between submission and return of work. Audio feedback is highly engaging for students and helps them appreciate that tutors care about their learning. Students are also much more likely to open audio files delivered online compared to collecting written feedback from a designated physical area.

Although producing audio files is relatively quick (with the rule of thumb being that 1 minute of audio is equal to 6 minutes of writing feedback), uploading them to a server and notifying students can take longer than simply annotating a written assignment. A solution to this is a simple click-record/share/listen design with no additional steps for staff or students to negotiate. A variety of technical solutions are available to provide such services, from highly expensive institution-wide commercial systems, such as Turnitin GradeMark, to low cost or free audio recording and sharing designs, such as SoundCloud (which allows direct online recording and sharing of audio files) or DropBox (which allows online sharing of audio files that need to be created on the user’s local computer). Shared files can be made public or, as is more appropriate for feedback purposes, shared privately. Apart from cost, the major advantage of file sharing sites is that they can provide instructor feedback by showing when feedback files are downloaded.

Work with multiple cohorts of students on a variety of assessment types has led me to the following suggestions for best practice in the use of audio feedback:

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State the timetable for assessment and feedback explicitly and in advance so that students know submission deadlines, when to expect feedback and when to expect marks (if applicable).

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To be effective, feedback should be separated from the return of marks. if students receive their marks at the same time as or before they receive feedback, many will not look at the feedback if they are satisfied with their mark and may do so only if they want to question this mark.

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Individual audio feedback is not suitable for all types of assessed work. For example, it works better for more discursive assignments such as essays than for short exercises. Shorter exercises may be better suited to group feedback that highlights common strengths and weaknesses.

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Timing is everything: it is best to get feedback to the students quickly while their minds are still engaged with an assessment task.

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Do not send audio files directly to students: place them on a server and write a personal message in which you share a link to the file. Email is the key to sharing with large numbers of students and has been shown to be an effective channel. Finish the audio file with an open question to prompt the student to engage.

(Alan Cann, University of Leicester)

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