I have just been giving some of my students feedback on their written work about good feedback practice. I used screencast-o-matic to give spoken feedback with the students' submitted work on the screen.
Several things occur to me:
- whether feedback is written, face-to-face (synchronous) or via a podcast or screencast (asynchronous) is a matter of student and tutor choice, but something tells me that using a variety of approaches is likely to be best practice
- some of my students expressed a preference for one mode of feedback without having experienced the others.
- in any case, some research has pointed out that what students prefer is not necessarily what is most effective!
- the time taken to produce feedback is an important consideration. After about half a dozen recordings I feel the time required was acceptable. I did not write any feedback. Instead I highlighted things I wanted to talk about
- in an effort to get a 'feedback loop' or 'feedback conversation' going, I raised points which I asked the students to respond to in their journals
- I have also asked them to give me feedback on my feedback, so watch this space for the results of that request.