Providing students with personalised feedback

Overview

It is well established that students benefit from constructive feedback on their learning. Everyday learning activities as well as special tasks and tests provide opportunities for the provision of feedback. Online marking presents a diverse range of tools that are designed to provide much richer options for feedback to students that include verbal, visual and written feedback.

Engagement

The digital tools available today can increase the personalisation possible and can greatly increase the turnaround time. The ability and ease in which quality audio feedback can be incorporated into the marking process allows positive outcomes for both staff and students. The students engagement in their assessments is improved with personalised feedback and the teacher’s voice can make distance students feel more connected and reduce feelings of isolations. The use of verbal feedback provides a link for students with someone they know, that is not just a name in a subject outline but a real person, who cares about their progress and achievements.

In Practice

Subject

BMS 240: Human Molecular Genetics

Teaching staff

Wouter Kalle

Motivation

Feedback is one of the most important aspects in student learning and traditionally scores quite low in the SES scores at CSU. An initiative in the UK called the audio supported enhanced learning support project (Stewart 2008) set out to use technology to enhance and personalise teaching. A study in the USA found that using audio feedback was faster than written feedback but the quality of the feedback increased at least 2-fold ((Ice, Curtis, Phillips, & Wells, 2007). Whilst this is not the place to give a full review on the benefits of audio feedback, there is widespread agreement in the literature that audio feedback is a superior form of feedback which will enhance learning and teaching (Dickson, 2015)

However another maybe even more important aspect of audio feedback is the opportunity to provide a more personal connection with the student which could lead to more engagement of the students with their subject, their course and even the university (Rowe 2011). Studies have shown an increased ability to understand the feedback, as there is more nuance and intonation and greater feelings of subject involvement especially in distance education (Oleseva and Richardson 2011). All this means that audio feedback can provide a system to create greater personal contact and maybe even emotional support (Rowe 2011). This shows that this type of feedback could be an extremely useful tool to increase subject engagement and student retention in online programs at CSU.

Implementation

Briefly, the audio feedback system is set up as follows:

• Assignments are downloaded from EASTS website on the due date.
• In the text different coloured highlights are made and if necessary comments are created using MS-word.
• Using MS-Word, the criteria are pasted in front of the assignment and the levels attained are highlighted and marks are awarded to each separate criterion.
• Final marks are recorded in spreadsheet
• Using a very simple Apple Mac app (called lecture recorder) and the computer microphone audio feedback is recorded for the student. The student’s first name is used and both the criteria and marks, are discussed. The various highlights and comments in the text are explained.
• The recording is usually between 3 minutes (very good marks, HD level) and 7 minutes (lots of remarks, usually PS/CR level).
• Marked files are sent back to the students through EASTS to record return date
• An email is sent to the students using the EASTS handing-in email containing the marked file and the audio file. This ‘double-up’ is done as the linking of the audio file to the marked document does not work very well and sometimes the audio file gets lost in the EASTS transition. Also this is a point of Quality Control to check whether all assignments have been marked and marks recorded.
• Quality Control is ensured by using the original file names for the audio files and consistently using student numbers and student names to record audio feedback and marks

The audio feedback always flows according to a fixed pattern. Below is an excerpt of a typical audio feedback file:

“Good morning (students first name), I just wanted to give you some audio feedback on your (subject code) assignment. As you can see I have copied and pasted the criteria in front of your work and blocked out the levels you have attained in pink. I added up all the marks and you scored X marks out of a hundred”.

A description of the levels attained follows including an explanation why these were attained.

“Looking at your assignment I have highlighted some parts which will be discussed now”.

The highlights are in different colours depending on whether they are regarding content, grammar, referencing or general. An explanation of the highlights and comments follows while slowly going through the text. According to personal feedback, students can actually follow the marking and comments through the text and are never lost. The audio feedback always ends with a conclusion and some words of encouragement.

“In short, you have achieved X marks, if you would pay attention to (a brief repeat of previous comments) you would easily score a (higher) level. I really enjoyed reading and marking your assignment and looking forward to seeing more of your work”.

Guide

If you are looking to implementing completely online marking within your subject/s, there are some important considerations to make when planning this approach:

• Consider the platform most suitable for your cohort and the assessment task.
• The virtues of audio feedback (like any feedback) seem to lay mostly in the detail of the feedback, the guidance it gives to increase quality in future work, the personal touch it gives and the idea of connection to the subject and university as is shown in the above comments and the many emails on the topic.

Tools

EASTS, NORFOLK (or voice recording app)

Literature