Will video kill the manuscript scrawl? The impact of video feedback on students’ perception of feedback

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Contributors

Simon Sneddon (University of Northampton)

Intended format

Paper presentation

Abstract

The National Student Survey (NSS), which first took place in 2005, suggests a steady increase in the levels of overall student satisfaction with their course. The 2010 results for overall satisfaction (at 82 per cent) build slightly on those from 2009 (81 per cent) and match the results from 2008 (HEFCE, 2008). Within these figures, however, the area of feedback has consistently proved to be slightly more problematic. The percentage of full time students who agreed or mostly agreed with question nine of the NSS (“Feedback on my work has helped me clarify things I did not understand”) was 57 per cent in England in 2009 (rising to 58 per cent in 2010), with similarly low levels in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (HEFCE, 2010). As the Higher Education Authority (HEA) puts it:

The National Student Survey has highlighted that feedback is a key area of importance for both staff and students and is a key factor underpinning successful learning.

— (HEA, 2010)

This paper outlines the early results from a pilot study, running from October 2010 to July 2011, which will be using video feedback instead of the traditional written feedback. The paper suggests whether this type of feedback could assist the students in understanding their work, and how lessons might be learned from it. The potential impact on the workload of marking tutors is also addressed.

The study took as its starting point the 2008 JISC-funded Sounds Good: Quicker, better assessment using audio feedback project of Bob Rotheram at Leeds Metropolitan University. The project report noted that:

Students were overwhelmingly positive about receiving audio feedback on their coursework. They frequently remarked approvingly about its personal nature and the detail provided, evidence that the lecturer had carefully considered their work.

— (Rotheram, 2009).

In 2007, Stannard found that students responded well to the use of screen capture software in marking draft coursework (Stannard, 2007), and Watkins suggested in 2010 that podcasting of lectures as an additional resource was widely welcomed by students (Watkins, 2010). Alison Bone also found that the vast majority of students felt that the use of podcasts, wikis or blogs by their tutors was helpful to their learning (Bone, 2009). For this project, the creation of a podcast of a generic feedback/revision session (such as that used by Almond (2009), was considered but rejected because of the desire for tailored, individual feedback and feedforward.

The pilot study group chosen is a mixture of law and non-law students taking a level five designated (i.e. not compulsory) module. The twenty students on the module, though a small sample, were a mixture of LLB, BSc and Foundation Degree students, some of whom had not studied any law before. The cohort is also quite well mixed by gender, age and ethnicity, although these factors are not explicitly addressed in the paper.

The feedback, on the students’ first piece of coursework in the module, will be recorded on a Flip video camcorderTM and posted onto the students’ individual area on the virtual learning environment (VLE). The VLE is set up so that each student can only access their own feedback. As Nichol stated “sometimes students do not value the feedback that they receive, preferring instead to concentrate on marks rather than advice that may help them to improve future work” (Nichol, 2007). To this end, the grade for the piece of work will deliberately not be revealed until the end of the clip, so that students will have to watch the whole clip, rather than switching off (literally and figuratively) after hearing their grade.

The students will then be asked to complete a short questionnaire on their feelings towards this form of feedback.

The feedback for the second piece of coursework will be in the form of standard written feedback and, and the end of the module, the students, moderator and external examiner will all be invited to share their thoughts on which type of feedback they felt was most helpful.

The results from this study will be used to shape the design of a further, inter-disciplinary study to design video feedback to increase the benefit of feedback to all students. This will, in turn, help to improve retention of students, and tackle the recurring bugbear of the NSS.

Presentation