Recently I have been 'playing' with giving feedback to students and other members of staff as audio files. Trying both making recordings using either handheld recorders or Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). I was trying it as part of the Sounds Good project (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/usersandinnovation/soundsgood.aspx)
The first attempt looked at giving a summary assessment feedback as an audio file, alongside individual written feedback to a group of first year students. It end up being about four minutes and was definitely more detailed than it would have been if I had written it. It had an unexpected outcome. It was recorded using a handheld recorder and my first time doing it, the volume varied as my hand moved. Some of the student's thought this was amusing, but they must have listened to it to know!
Second area was giving feedback on staff portfolio for a lecturer training course. It is good for this as the level of detail expected was quite high and one member of staff's portfolio was electronic so seemed appropriate. It was quicker and for me I feel I gave more detailed feedback.
Currently I am using it to give feedback on group work again to first year student and storing it in the groups own area on NILE.
Audio feedback is not new but it was fairly new to me and I would recommend it as something to try. A good place to start is perhaps the recent A Word In Your Ear 2009 Conference (http://research.shu.ac.uk/lti/awordinyourear2009/) or the Case Study produced for the Engineering Subject Centre.
Turner S (2009)"Initial experience of using audio feedback for general assignment feedback" A Word In Your Ear 2009 Sheffield Hallam University, 18 December 2009 pg 12. Audio file discussing this can be found at: http://research.shu.ac.uk/lti/awordinyourear2009/audio/013-turner-Initial-experience.mp3
Yes, I agree with you when you say that audio feedback on assignments is worth trying. Students certainly seem to value it more and think that the teacher has responded more carefully and thoughtfully than if it was a written comment. Perhaps this is a novelty effect and will disappear in a year or three but I think it is particularly useful providing more holistic and motivational feedback. It is also important that there is a match between the feedback and the media -- it is a lot easier to provide a correctly formatted reference in text rather than speech.
ReplyDeleteI've been embedding audio in Word files for a couple of years and my approach is a little different to that used by "Sounds Good" or that discussed at "A Word in your Ear". Instead of recording 4 or 5 minutes of audio and then returning it to students as a seperate file, I record the audio snippet directly into Word. It shows up as a speaker icon - see http://emarkingassistant.com/commentwithaudio.htm - in much the same way as comments in the margin or tracked changes. Advantages of doing it this way include: the audio fragment is placed in a specific point in the text and can be relatively short (less than 1 min), it is easy to return the audio and the assignment as it is all in the same file, it is very easy to record and compress the audio in Word so it does not increase the file size to much (perhaps 200K per minute is more than adequate for spoken feedback), the audio comments can be easily saved to insert into future assignments, and the feedback can include interleaved audio, text, and images.
If you are using the eMarking Assistant addin to Word ($USD20 from http://emarkingassistant.com/ ) you can do this by using the floating toolbar and clicking the A NEW AUDIO COMMENT item then > COMMENT on the floating toolbar.
You can also do this directly in Word 2007 by using the REVIEW tab > NEW COMMENT > INSERT tab > TEXT group > OBJEXT dropdown > OBJECT item > scroll to WAVE SOUND > OK > then record it in using Sound Recorder. If you are using Word 2003 it is a little easier with INSERT menu > COMMENT item > INSERT menu > OBJECT item > scroll to WAVE SOUND > OK > then record it in using Sound Recorder.
You can see a video demonstration at http://emarkingassistant.com/usingindex.htm
This is a 10 minute demo but you can jump to about 4:20 where an audio comment is recorded and inserted and then stored for reuse in future assignments.
eMarking Assistant (see following link) is a Word addin that provides various tools to assist markers to provide maximum useful and detailed feedback in the minimum time. More information and a 60 day trial is available from the http://eMarkingAssistant.com site.
In addition to providing tools to allow you to create, manage and reuse comments containing text, images, links and audio, it provides automated marking rubrics that highlight standards, record, total and rescale marks and allows you to Google phrases or return assignments all from within Word.
I wish you well in your teaching.
Peter Evans
email: emarking-assistant@baker-evans.com
web site: http://eMarkingAssistant.com