Using audio feedback in your teaching - Case study Video Lecture | Teach Online: A Comprehensive Approach for Teaching Online - Professional Skills

in this case study we look at how
teachers can use all your feedback in
the online teaching practice audio
recordings are a very powerful and very
efficient form of student feedback and
they can be used on any device such as
your computer or even your phone in this
case study
Simon McIntyre from Co front line uses
audio feedback to engage his students in
a fully online postgraduate program I
teach a class of about 30 students which
is a core course within that degree and
they're all fully online students maybe
one or two live in Sydney but the rest
are from overseas and rural Australia I
think the main thing that prompted me to
start using audio feedback was the fact
that when I was marking assignments it
actually took a long time to write a
decent amount of feedback for students
so I could take anywhere between 30 or
40 minutes to write what I consider to
be good feedback so by picking up my
ipod and actually speaking that feedback
it just saved me a tremendous amount of
time we're working in an art design
faculty here but it could work equally
well in the sciences medicine law etc
okay so this is my course the
cross-disciplinary Art and Design one
core course of our master's program some
of my students have done a wiki report
so once I've actually looked at the
students work on screen I simply jump
into a program called audacity which is
a free piece of software you can
download online and using the built-in
microphone on my computer or an external
mic I can just press record and start
giving my feedback to the students hi
team pixel and thanks very much for your
project portfolio B report it's a really
thorough piece of analysis and I'm
really glad that you're online
collaborative skills have built up over
the course of the program to enable you
to work so well together now once I
finished recording my feedback I can
listen to it again the high teen pixel
and thanks very much for your project
portfolio B report and with this
software I can quickly edit things just
like in a word processor by quickly
dragging pressing delete and moving
things around I can also press record
again if I've made a mistake and record
some other part and once again team I
think it's been fantastic that you've
worked together so well congratulations
now the easiest file format that you can
use to deliver this feedback to students
is an mp3 it works on just about every
computer without the students needing to
get other pieces of software to play it
back so audacity has the option to
export as mp3 now if you choose that
it's just going to merge it into one
file for me I can give my feedback in a
name
I'm just here okay okay so that's
rendered that file out for me now
there's the mp3 file and I can see that
it's very very small so it's great for
delivering over the Internet
I actually upload this into their
portfolio area where they can keep it
private and their that file is for the
student online so at any time they can
come in and listen to it live just by
clicking the high team pixel and thanks
very much for your project portfolio B
report if they want to they can also
download the original file from here so
that they can keep it on their desktop
or put it onto their iPod or any other
audio playing device they may have
I did this to save time for myself but
when the students first received this
audio feedback they had this tremendous
sense of connection back to me as a
teacher and because I never seen my
students face to face they actually
found that incredibly valuable like they
got to know me a little bit better
it also gives that personal touch the
human touch to your course which
sometimes can be a challenge in online
learning
if I'm giving student feedback and
recording it I usually don't plan at
first what I usually do is I'll download
their assignment or look at their work
online I don't actually print anything
off these days and as I'm reading it I
sort of may make one or two notes on a
piece of paper but then I just switch on
the recording and just talk teachers
don't need much technical skill at all
to do this when I started doing this I
actually had an iPod and there's one of
the older models now but it wasn't back
then and I just bought a little
microphone from the Apple store that I
could just plug right into the bottom
there and literally start giving
feedback and recording it from here and
then just downloading that into iTunes
so it's great if you're giving feedback
where people have their work all around
a room or something like that you can
walk around and do it if it's something
that I'm marking on the computer screen
I just use something like a program
called audacity or I also use QuickTime
Pro just to record straight into the
computer and then it's done
I don't treat it any differently to any
other form of feedback you've got to be
true to yourself and to the students
needs to with audio feedback and
absolutely doesn't matter if the
lecturer stutters or pause and as in
fact it's it does humanize the feedback
a lot having that conversation with the
student that that's what really matters
getting to the crux of the feedback the
issues what's going to help the student
learn that's what's important rather
than sounding super polished or
professional I felt quite self-conscious
to start with but I guess the fact is
after you've done it one or two times
you start to forget that you're actually
recording and it sounds like you're
having a conversation with the student
so that becomes a lot easier appreciated
the fact that the audio feedback came to
me in a private section nobody else
could access it I upload my file into a
private area for the student personally
I don't like giving audio feedback in a
way that other students can hear it in
my mind it's between me and that student
and they can share it if they like if
it's a positive thing then I'm very
happy but if I need to work on some
things I would like to have that told to
me in a private conversation rather than
in a way that other people can listen in
when I'm using audio feedback in terms
of my teaching I don't necessarily use
it for every aspect of the online course
to me using the message board and having
those written threads are still very
important so that they form a record of
learning and students can look back so I
just use audio feedback for main
assessment points when students are
submitting final assignments and that
kind of thing
it doesn't have to actually be used in
the context of a fully online course you
could actually have a face-to-face class
and give feedback to students using
audio feedback because they've got that
archive of the feedback there
the feedback that I get from the
students tells me that it's worthwhile
because they themselves get such a
greater depth of understanding of what
I'm trying to say when it's not just
cold words on the screen I would
encourage all lecturers to try the audio
feedback because as a student it has
more impact
you