How one tutor increased students’ engagement with feedback.
In this video blog post Carl Simmons explains why assessment is so problematic and suggests how tutors can increase the amount of useful information that students receive using screen and voice recording software.
The issues are:
- Good quality feedback consumes significant tutor resource;
- Students tend not to use the qualitative feedback comments.
Carl replaced traditional feedback (handwritten comments / annotated Word documents) with videos of each students’ script, adding an audio recording of himself talking about the work – a ‘screencast’.
Results indicate that students both use this feedback more than traditional text comments – and feel that the assessor has their best interests at heart, providing a motivational boost.
The students engaged far more readily with the screencast feedback – often viewing it more than three times. There was also a perception that the feedback took significantly longer to produce – yet Carl found creating the screencasts took him about the same length of time as previous methods.
Carl’s approach is significant because many studies indicate increasing student engagement with qualitative feedback improves students’ outcomes.
Carl has created a screencast that outlines the technique and discusses how he analysed the data. Potential issues are also identified, such as raising students’ expectations. Here’s the link: http://youtu.be/P5R69BvjJDI
Your next steps?
Create a screen cast of your own – perhaps marking an exemplar piece – unpacking the reasoning behind the piece’s grade.
Carl would be delighted to speak to colleagues, both at Edge Hill and beyond to give help and advice to those considering using this screen casting technique. Further, perhaps you might be able to add to the research data – seeing if the results you get are similar to those already observed.
Carl Simmons
Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Education
Telephone: 01695 650916 x7916
Email: [email protected]