What’s it like as a student to receive audio feedback on your written work? What’s it like for the lecturer who gives audio feedback? Here’s a simulation of the experience.

‘Book review exercise’ (Book review exercise.doc) outlines a task for a fictional student at a fictional university. It also contains the outline assessment criteria and what the student wrote. First, imagine yourself as the assessor, John Little. Look at the task and bear in mind the assessment criteria as you read the assignment. What would you say (not write) to the student? What mark would you give? Why?

Next, imagine that you are the student, Marion Tuck. Play the audio file (Book_review_feedback.mp3)  which contains the assessor’s comments on your work. How does it feel, hearing what he has to say? How does it compare with receiving written comments?

Now back to the real world, but keep using your imagination: you’re an assessor and you’ve had some practice at giving audio feedback. John Little’s comments to Marion Tuck lasted 4mins 34secs and contained 792 words, along with some non-verbal communication. Would it be a richer experience for your students to receive feedback routinely in this way? Would it benefit you? In particular, might it save you time? Sounds Good is trying to answer these questions.

As an aside, experience shows that assessors are minded to give very different marks to Marion Tuck’s work (a high of 80% and a low of under 20% in early trials). Some variation is to be expected, but the huge range has been a surprise. So this material may also serve to illustrate the subjectivity of assessment. If you’re an educational developer, maybe you’d like to try using the book review and feedback for this purpose. A reusable learning object, perhaps?

The files mentioned in this entry are also available in the Documents pages of the website.

(Posted by Bob Rotheram, Project Manager, Sounds Good)