TELedvisors webinar – August 2021

Rescued from HERDSA21 –  current projects on technology’s role in enabling feedback and assessment at different universities  

 This Thursday’s webinar allows us to hear about two of the research projects that should have been presented at this year’s HERDSA conference. The presenters are educators in very different roles who have instituted and examined changes in technology-enabled assessment and feedback. 

Humanising online learning: screen-casted audiovisual feedback in higher education 

Ameena Payne  Swinburne University of Technology Online, Melbourne.

In short: What are the benefits and challenges of audio/video feedback? How can you measure the impact of audio/video feedback for assessments on the learners, and what they do next? 

Research has demonstrated that students benefit from feedback that is consistent, tailored, and explains not only learners’ areas for development, but what they have done well – and why, and how to ‘feed forward’ for their future learnings. Each individual learner presents unique academic challenges, and feedback dialogue needs to be personalised to each learner’s needs.  

Written feedback to students has been one of the most widely used feedback methods but has been criticised by students for its sub-par quality. Such criticisms include the vague nature of comments and a lack of clear examples of constructive feed-forward, leaving learners unclear on how to improve their work. Following these criticisms, alternative feedback modes such as audio/video feedback have been explored which may offer richer feedback and have the benefit of being more personalised. 

This presentation explores whether this change, from traditional written comments to screen-casted comments + annotated text feedback comments, is effective. Do students see this feedback as clear, relevant and valuable? Does audio/video feedback improve learning? 

Technology is the key: Student musicians’ engagement with PebblePad for authentic professional learning  

Dr Diana Tolmie 

Griffith University, South Brisbane 

In short: Instead of preparing a wholly written assessment, students were asked to use PebblePad to prepare their practice application to a cultural trust. While content and teaching style remained unchanged, this authentic approach to the assessment transformed the student experience and learning outcomes.  

Conservatoriums and tertiary music schools have not been immune to the higher education demand to create industry-ready graduates. While many institutions have introduced career development initiatives, it is widely acknowledged that professional skill acquisition is more successful when experientially rather than theoretically learned. For the past seven years, students in the third-year course have been required to submit an assessment based on the Ian Potter Cultural Trust grant application to develop fundraising and career planning capabilities. 

In 2019, 94 students completed an online simulation of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust grant application via PebblePad (an online learning tool engaging in multimedia), as opposed to the past student practice of submitting a Word document. The quality of assessments was analysed according to the related criteria, which mimicked standard grant requirements, and compared with previous course submissions. A one-question survey, also present in arts grant applications, was introduced to determine how students experienced the technological process. The whole project aimed to discover how authentically experienced assessment would impact student engagement and professional skill learning.