Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Mekala Soosay
to self and peer-assess. Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) argue that this type of feedback may be
particularly helpful to lower-achieving students because it shifts the focus onto assisting them to
improve as a result of effort, rather than drawing attention to the perceived lack of ability. Typical
student comments on the tutor and peer feedback as discussion postings were:
‘It helped me define the way of learning and what was expected in terms of structure to
the assignment’.
‘…. when I did ask the answer was given directly just to put me on the right track’.
The potential benefits afforded by peer feedback through discussion boards are not immediately
understood by students, as only 34% of students found this method to be useful. A way of overcoming
these issues might be to devise strategies that guide and engage students in critical construction of
knowledge and make them explicit to students as Palloff and Pratt (2007) assert.
Three tutors who have used audio feedback, mainly to provide generic feedback rated the medium
highly, commenting on how the tone of voice can be used to motivate students and that the feedback
is accessible. Trials by Rotheram (2008) giving audio feedback have found that motivation is achieved
more easily than written feedback alone. However students commented on issues in streaming the
audio and were not appreciative of generic audio feedback. Nicol (2010) argues that there is immense
potential to exploit this form of feedback; however both tutors and students need to get accustomed to
providing and receiving feedback in audio or video format. X-stream allows the embedding of various
feedback e-tools, listed in Table 4, and Question 4 tries to capture the desired use of feedback e-tools
by students vs. tutors’ rating of the effectiveness of e-tools that they use. The most popular e-tool is
the provision of individual feedback as comments in the assignment drop box or feedback attached as
a file of written comments. Students have remarked how these are easily accessed, read and
assimilated by them. Tutors rate these e-tools highly, as they facilitate listing of comments against
criteria and are accessible. Sadler (2010) and Nicol (2010) find that explicitly mapping feedback with
the student’s work makes feedback less ambiguous or abstract to them. Typical comments from
students relating to preferred X-stream feedback opportunities were:
Table 4: Responses to question 4
(*Tutors were asked to leave blank the e-tools they did not use)
Feedback
Opportunities
Percentage of students agreeing or
strongly agreeing with the statement:
I would like to have the following
feedback opportunities included on Xstream.
Percentage of tutors agreeing or strongly
agreeing with the statement: Please rate the
following X-stream e-tools that you use, in terms
of effectiveness of meeting your requirements of
feedback provision. (1-5).
Multiple Choice
Questions
(MCQs) /
Quizzes. 46% 67%
Assignments
Drop Box. 75% 83%
Assignments
Drop Box with
Plagiarism
Detection. 64% 67%
Discussion
Boards. 60% 66%
Journals or
Blogs. 44% *0%
Audio Podcast
Creation Tools. 28% *0%
Video Podcast
Creation Tools. 31% *0%
Rubrics Marking
and feedback. 51% 57%
Written
Comments
feedback. 85% 80%
Peer Review. 43% 33%
Synchronous
Chat. 33% *0%
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