Online Learning Update

June 14, 2014

Audio Feedback versus Written Feedback: Instructors’ and Students’ Perspectives

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:09 am

by Andrew J. Cavanaugh & Liyan Song, JOLT

Providing feedback to students on their writing represents perhaps the most important task of a composition instructor and also possibly the most time-consuming task. In online composition classes, this task becomes more daunting, as there are no opportunities for face-to-face conversations with students. Typically, online instructors provide comments to students in text form. The use of audio comments through MP3 files has become an alternative. The purpose of this case study was to examine students’ and instructors’ perceptions of audio feedback and written feedback for student papers in online composition classes. Data were collected through surveys and interviews. The results show that instructors had mixed feelings about the use of audio, while students tended to have positive feelings toward it. The findings also reveal that teachers tended to give more global commentary when using audio comments and more local commentary when using written comments. Finally, the findings indicate that students’ methods of revising their papers based on the feedback they receive may impact their preference for one modality over the other. Implications for further research are discussed at the end of the paper.

http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no1/cavanaugh_0314.pdf

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