Electronic delivery of oral feedback on graphic design projects

Coralie McCormack
Centre for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and Scholarship
University of Canberra

Mary-Jane Taylor
School of Design and Architecture
University of Canberra

The characteristics of feedback that support students’ learning have been described. However, the learning preferences of today’s students (e.g. use of current technologies, expectation for flexibility and immediacy), when combined with the declining amount of time students spend on campus, may translate into particular expectations about the mode of delivery and time and place of receipt of assessment feedback. This study reports graphic design students’ and their teacher’s perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of oral feedback recorded on an ipod and emailed to students as a digital voice file. Students’ questionnaire responses suggest the advantages of this mode of delivery outweighed the disadvantages and support the learning preferences of this m-learning generation. For time-poor university teachers seeking to balance the tensions between timeliness, quantity and quality of feedback for student consumers, who are frequently not on campus to receive that feedback in a face-to-face session, electronic delivery of pre-recorded oral feedback may be one way to meet students’ learning preferences.

Keywords: electronic, oral feedback, assessment, graphic design