I’m a big fan of using audio feedback for marking of papers and proposals with my Education grad students. I use Adobe Acrobat to embed usually short audio comments (maybe 20-40 per paper) and a summary comment. I do it because it saves me time and generally my students report really liking it. It allows me to project more positive “teaching presence” and I think I am much better able to express complicated as well as short mechanical issues – QUICKLY! Too may educational technology based innovations or more general educational innovations actually cost teachers’ time -even after an almost inevitable time lost surmounting a sometimes steep learning curve.
Thus, I was pleased to see:
Cavanaugh, A., & Song, L. (2014). Audio Feedback versus Written Feedback: Instructors’ and Students’ Perspectives Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 9(2). http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no1/
This small scale study looked at postsecondary English teachers using audio (I think monologues using MP3) and not embedded (and IMHO much better Adobe Connect annotations). One teacher reported taking MORE time- but only because she wrote the comments by hand and then read them into the recorder (sigh…). Generally students liked the feedback assessed by interviews and a short survey.
This study helps us uncover the different (likely discipline centric) ways in which essays are marked. Teachers reported using and liking the audio for general, global comments, but text feedback for small mechanical issues that are common in English assessment (noting or correcting grammar issues as example). There are likely other differences amongst style of teaching, learning and assessment across disciplines and perhaps across different educational level and ages.
The article has no earth shattering surprises, but does confirm my earlier thoughts on audio feedback- so I like it. It also has one of the most extensive lit reviews (for a short paper) that does a good job of reviewing our last decade of use of audio feedback.
The biggest question though, is if audio is faster, is preferred by students and teachers, is very cheap to implement- why aren’t all teachers using.
Terry
Interesting that you connect audio comments with teaching presence – I had not thought of it that way (I use weekly video introductions to improve teaching presence). I found that I use Siri when marking to convert my audio comments to text comments for fear that technical issues would prevent my students from getting the feedback. Next time I shall experiment more with audio.