student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Student Feedback & Leadership
Second Semester 2008
Once the issue of mobile phone charges was addressed, as expected, about
80% of the students from the class had completed all the registered protocol
for the trial by week 3, and almost all students had participated in the trial
in week 4. Unfortunately this number lost ground in the consecutive weeks due
to a technical glitch but recovered again later in the semester once the problem
was rectified. A focus group was conducted in the last week to get student
feedback on the use of this technology. Similar to the students in class B from
Semester 1, students from this class were generally positive about the use
of classroom technology, and indeed found the use of mobile phones in class
interesting. However, they were not convinced that this would necessarily
improve their learning experience or their exam performance. Some believed
that this system of feedback was more useful to the lecturer in judging how
much of the material has actually been learnt by their students, than to the
students per se. In contrast, students evaluated the podcasts, which were
also trialled in Semester 2, more favourably as a means of providing feedback.
The podcasts were delivered through the DLS using multiple technologies.
This initiative was well received as judged from the open ended comments
on the CES and the hit rate recorded which ranged from 1600 to 2000 per
podcast, peaking the day before the exam. (see Figure 1). Data is being
collated to investigate the relationship between student use of podcast
and their course performance. This initiative will be continued in 2009 and
will endeavour to involve a minimum of four other School staff in at least
one podcast to help expose a wider group of staff to the potential of the
technology. The podcast will also include interviews with industry experts
on the topic of the week.
Figure 1 Hit rates for Podcast #5
500
400
300
Hits
200
100
0
2008-07-14 2008-08-05 2008-08-27 2008-09-18 2008-10-10 2008-10-31
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