The Future of Feedback

Some months ago i presented at The Future of Audio Feedback event at Sheffield Hallam University (in collaboration with the HEA). The event was aimed at those that were quite new to the concept of audio feedback and provided examples of practice and feedback from students who had been utilising audio feedback.

Myself and a colleague Jo Stroud, e-Learning Officer from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine presented the workshop 'Future Feedback... Supported by Technology' (see short abstract below)

Media-enhanced feedback is becoming ever easier to produce, with the growing prominence of affordable and powerful mobile devices reducing our reliance on institutionally-supplied hardware and software. This session will look at some of the free or cheaply available tools and applications accessible to anyone with an interest in creating richer electronic feedback.

The session looked at a mish mash of tools that could be used to deliver feedback to your students using just what you have on your PC/Laptop without having to install or buy anything new, bonus! I re-jigged the session and delivered it to the department of Human Communication Sciences (HCS) a few weeks ago. HCS have been selected to be involved in an institutional wide project on feedback called 'Flexible Formative F3edback' which is aims to gather expectation and experiences of feedback across all faculties. 

There's been some interest from staff in using free tools to enhance and engage students in feedback. There's a lot of widespread use of Turnitin within the faculty at present and many people using Grademark to deliver feedback taking advantage of the ability to annotate online scripts using Quickmark comments, leave detailed free text feedback, audio feedback and also provide a linked marking criteria (rubric). One aspect we (and everyone else no doubt) are struggling to overcome is Grademark's inability to accommodate blind/second marking however this doesn't effect everyones marking practices and is something on the Turnitin/Grademark roadmap to be addressed in the future.

For now i think encouraging using a variety of technology enhanced methods to support feedback is the way forward as it offers more flexibility and freedom. I'm also going to be supporting the use of Grademark within departments, next stop! ScHARR Bitesize on the 7th May 'Online Marking through Turnitin & Grademark'

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Based on a work at navdeepinthought.blogspot.com.