Interesting example of multimedia student feedback, with some challenging questions in response from M C Morgan:
…it also shows how significantly commenting would have to change to make it useful in screencasting. Let’s talk about micro-management. Let’s talk about the pedagogical value of the student being able to skip around in the commenting.
As a demo, it’s curious, in part because it highlights the weaknesses of the tutor-at-the-table approach.
And, as an afterthought, it certainly makes the student a passive receiver of the message: there’s no room in a screencast for dialogue. You can’t even change the channel.
o.k., while the comments seem valid, do you recall getting essays back during your own educational career? I know for myself, the comments always seemed really terse and often I didn’t understand the justification for them. I suppose the idea was that you would meet with your instructor afterwards if you had some questions, but in practice this often set up a confrontational dynamic over ‘marks’ rather than positive dialogue leading to learning. So on that measure, this seems like a huge improvement. At least the context for the comments is provided, and what’s more it would make me as a student feel that at least the instructor had actually read my paper and spent time to give feedback, which I often wondered if they even did. So – dialogue is good, but thoughtful comments provided in this dynamic way seems at least a step away from what was really an atrocious model for learning, a few scribbled comments in the margins of papers.
Scott — I don’t disagree. I like the model of feedback here, and originally was throwing up a quickie post to point at it.
But then reading Morgan’s comments, I figured they were provocative, so I tossed them in too. I find the whole process of grading very challenging (and am wading through a huge pile of it presently), so it struck a reflexive nerve.
End result, a post without enough context.
Voice feedback (although I’m not sure about the need for a screencast in this example) makes total sense in distance contexts, at least. We’ve been using ipods (in conjunction with a written rubric) to record feedback for student assignments (concept maps and written papers) and from a tutor perspective we’ve found it’s great because it lets you a) give more feedback in less time than you would if you had to write it out b) makes the feedback part a bit less impersonal and scary to the student by letting you adopt a tone of communication that invites dialogue (which is really what constructivism should be about anyways). Students have pretty much said positive things about getting feedback in this way, but suggested we keep the audio file under 5 minutes long. So, basically I’m agreeing with Scott:)