Enhancing Feedback Report

Enhancing student feedback through the use of technology: trialling audio and video e-feedback on students’ work in the School of English.

This project, funded by the Teaching and Learning Strategic fund, aims to improve feedback to students and the student academic experience by trialling the use of audio and video feedback in the School, in a project which will test out the effectiveness of these technologies with both undergraduate and postgraduate students and in the ‘live’ and distance learning environments.

In September 2011 the project began with a one-day conference at Nottingham: ‘Learning Technologies: Enhancing Feedback and the Student Experience’, involving four invited speakers:

Dai Hounsell (University of Edinburgh)

‘Rethinking Feedback: What's It For, and How Can It Make a Difference?'

Full Audio Feed - PowerPoint slides

---

Nick Robinson (University of Leeds)

‘Talk ain’t cheap! Audio as a panacea to student feedback?’

Full Audio Feed

---

Anne Crook (University of Reading)

‘The use of video technology for providing feedback to students: Can it enhance the feedback experience for staff and students?’

Full Audio Feed - PowerPoint slides

---

Russell Stannard (University of Warwick)

‘Revolutionising the way we provide feedback -­ 5 years of Screen Capture Experiments’

Full Audio Feed - PowerPoint slides

 

Question Extracts

What’s wrong with feedback, and why?

• Dai Hounsell on the feedback giver, the feedback recipient, and the changing institutional context
• Issues to focus on: consistency, timing, student engagement (Anne Crook)
• What is feedback, and what does it achieve: if feedback doesn’t make a difference, it’s not really feedback at all (Dai Hounsell)

Why does feedback matter?

• Learning without feedback is ‘blind archery’ (Dai Hounsell)
• Because students need to learn how to write (Nick Robinson)
• Changing experiences of feedback from school to university: the student experience (Dai Hounsell)
• What’s the feedback for? (Dai Hounsell)
• Connoisseurship: sharing understandings of standards with our students (Dai Hounsell)

Audio feedback:

• Why use audio feedback? Pros for students (Nick Robinson)
• Why use audio feedback? Potential cons for staff (Nick Robinson)
• Does it take more time or effort? (Nick Robinson)

Video feedback:

• Why use video feedback? Background to the ASSET project (Anne Crook)
• How the ASSET project worked in practice (Anne Crook)
• Feedback on the project from staff (Anne Crook)
• Feedback on the project from students (Anne Crook)

Question and Answer Session:

You can watch the roundtable Question and Answer session (47mins, 120mb) between all speakers, chaired by Prof. Wyn Morgan, the University of Nottingham's Director of teaching and Learning.

 

Jo Robinson, Director of Teaching, and Neal Alexander, Director of Distance Learning, are currently trialling audio feedback for third year undergraduate students and video feedback for MA English Studies students, and results from those trials will be reported here in Spring 2012.

Details of Enhancing Feedback Conference held in 2011

 

Back to top