About to start stage one feedback.

At the end of this week over 100 students (I hope) will be submitting their work for me to assess. I used audio feedback last year on about 25 students from this very module. This year I plan to do about 80. The students upload the assignments via our virtual learning environment (VLE). I then send the audio feedback files back to the students via the VLE.

For this assignment due Friday I will be giving audio to about 50% of the students from this cohort. I will be interested to see how much time that saves me and of course the feedback I get from the students.

I will then be giving audio feedback to a different group of students next semester, on a different level just to get an idea how the feedback is received at different levels of learning.

I have always enjoyed giving audio feedback and now the process is second nature so I do not have the task of learning the technologies. For those of you who want to try audio feedback but are worried about the technicalities of undertaking it I would just give it a go.

Bob and I have given an introductory workshop on audio feedback to staff at Leeds Met and many of those were first time users. By the end of a 1 hour session the technology was not the barrier but hearing your own voice played back for the first time was the hardest thing to overcome.

Here Goes....

Hi, this is my first post to the Sounds Good blog, and I only have 10 minutes or so. I'm Steve Dixon, Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at Newman University College, and we're just about to start audio feedback.

Literally.

As in about nine and a half minutes time.

We're trialling with our first year cohort, so we have about 80 students or so. All the students have submitted an essay via Moodle (our VLE), and we're adding in-text comments then providing a link to the audio feedback, again via Moodle. The setting up and administration of this has been fairly straightforward, although as we have a marking team for this (6 staff), I've also had to deliver training sessions and write guidelines (Bob's original documentation was incredibly useful in this respect). We're using Handy H4s for recording, although one or two of the marking team have hinted at a preference for digital microphones.

OK, I now have less than 5 minutes before we have a last meeting before we start marking and giving feedback, and coffee is important. Wish us luck...