1. Voice feedback on formative assigments Ian Greener School of Applied Social Sciences

2. Voice feedback? Is your written formative feedback getting a bit formulaic? Do you ever get the feeling that if you could offer more directed, more specific feedback, then your students might do better in their summatives? Do you find writing formative feedback frustrating when you can think much quicker than you can write or type?

3. Voice feedback Providing voice feedback can help with at least some of this… It allows you to talk direct to student work It is reasonably quick – probably as quick as providing written feedback But it gives students far more to go on And the evidence (from here) and from other sites where it has been tried suggest that students like it (think NSS….)

4. How do you give voice feedback? I’m afraid the process could be smoother, but once you’ve been though it once, isn’t too bad I use a digital voice recorder. I read through an assignment once, then talk to it the second time through. Talking also allows me to come up with a mark through argument. Each assignment gets one file. As long as I know the first file number on the digital recorder, and keep the scripts in order, they map onto on another (file number and student number) pretty straightforwardly through a list Saying the student number at the beginning of each file allows the process to be checked All the files are then put in a DUO file directory (using Webdav and Discovery) Students are given access to the file store, and download the file that is theirs by looking at the list They can then play it back at their leisure, with their essay in front of them

5. Some feedback from students…. I think this is a much better system than paper feedback. I know I got a lot more from it than if you had just had to tick boxes and given me a comment in that little box on the piece of paper. It was also much easier to use than anticipated, and I definitely think you should recommend this to other lecturers I found the feedback for the formative much better than 'normal' written feedback.

6. Problems All students can access the feedback files for all other students So you have get permission before you can do it (from the students), with an opt-out No students have opted out of the (Masters) courses I’ve used the system on But on the undergrad programme, a couple of students did opt out when a colleague wanted to use this But as one student said: – Regarding people being able to listen to other people's, I can see from listening to mine that it wouldn't make much sense to someone who didn't have a copy of the essay, so I don't see that that is a real problem.

7. Other problems I’m aware this isn’t exactly cutting-edge technology It would be better if students could get their own feedback only, but emailing isn’t possible as the files are too big and it would be pretty time intensive It may be possible to use Gradebook where the assignment has been submitted electronically, but once again this is very time intensive so loses a lot of the benefit for staff

8. Conclusion Students get a lot more feedback this way, but it’s not a good technological solution (and alternative methods seem rather over-engineered….) However, students do seem to like it, and I can report a significant improvement in summative work as a result of running formatives this way (my second marker commented ‘they finally seem to have got it’) Audio feedback is getting far more common across the sector (google ‘university audio feedback’) I would argue that this approach could also be used in summatives – but the University seems to be hamstringing us somewhat in this respect….