Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Mekala Soosay
‘It makes more sense to me to have a mark breakdown’.
‘Comments against marking criteria or report would be useful’.
A fairly high percentage of students and tutors who have used asynchronous discussions found them
to be useful in providing supplementary feedback to extend students’ understanding. Tutors who
provide audio/video feedback prefer using external e-tools to X-stream e-tools.
Responses to Question 5 (Table 5) suggest that students appreciate provision of feedback using
audio/video depending on the nature of assessment, although Table 3 suggests that they also prefer
individual instead of generic feedback, which includes audio/video media.
Table 5: Responses to question 5
Answer Options Percentage of students agreeing with
the statement: I would like to see
technology being used to provide
feedback (e.g. audio/video feedback)
for the following reason(s):
Percentage of tutors agreeing with
the statement: I would like to use
technology to provide feedback (e.g.
audio/video feedback) for the
following reason(s):
Feedback can be received
within a reasonable time. 90% 70%
Feedback can be useful in
helping me (students) to
understand where I (they)
have made mistakes in my
(their) task(s). 88% 70%
Feedback can be useful in
helping me (students) to
correct any mistakes in my
(their) task(s). 90% 70%
A majority of tutors emphasised the value of engaging students in a one-to-one dialogue when
discussing formative feedback, where students’ attention can be drawn to the exact problem area,
offering remedial actions. Most importantly, a relationship can be developed while trying to ascertain
the individual learning requirements, as several students remarked:
‘A personal conversation about the strengths and weaknesses explained works as I
would be clear on how to correct my work’.
‘The feedback received during a meeting with my tutor is much easier for interpretation’.
Given that staff and students have expressed the need for ongoing conversation, the educational
affordances offered by both synchronous and asynchronous technologies could be exploited to meet
this requirement.
Tutors are discouraged from using audio or video for feedback as it takes time to craft and record
feedback, and send it individually to students. As one tutor remarked ‘the effort put into producing
audio or video feedback does not justify its’ usefulness over and above face-to-face feedback’. A
small percentage of students who are direct entrants to the final-year mostly disagreed with the idea
of technology being used to provide feedback. Further probing suggests that if they had been
exposed to a variety of technology-enhanced feedback methods in their early undergraduate years,
they would be better placed to accept more innovative feedback methods using audio or video. This is
contradictory to the claim by Prensky (2001), who suggests that the current generation of students
whom he refers to as digital natives, are more exposed to technology than ever and therefore more
receptive to its’ use. However, there is a distinction between familiarity with the technology and an
innate ability to do something purposeful with it, and here, innovative feedback means may not be
fully appreciated by students as explicit and purposeful.
Question 6 (Table 6) tries to ascertain tutors’ and students’ perceptions of whether technology could
be used to either enhance or replace face-to-face feedback. Furthermore, it also attempts to establish
if the format of the feedback makes a difference in the appropriateness and usefulness of content that
is conveyed. Most tutors echoed the sentiment that it is time-consuming to provide clear written
feedback based on marking criteria, which a fair number of students did not turn up to collect. They
added that feedback that is useful in helping students understand where they have made mistakes in
their tasks depends more on content and less on technology. The findings indicate the need for
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