Dialogues with online students: experiments with Audio-Visual feedback. Part 2: Screencasts

by Martha Partridge

Introduction 

Feedback is often identified by students as among the most important aspects of a course, and there is abundant literature showing the impact of quality feedback on student learning (see Hattie and Timperley, 2007, for a summary of meta-analyses on feedback). Most of this research is about the traditional written form of feedback, but I want to learn more about alternative modes such as audio and audio-visual. Surely some students would find these forms of feedback more effective than written, just as some people are better able to follow written instructions, while some need visuals and some prefer a spoken explanation.

I experimented with modes of feedback over the summer of 2022, while teaching on the University of Bristol’s six-week online Pre-Sessional course. I used Flipgrid to give audio-visual feedback on students’ reflective videos. The subject of this post, though, is screencasting, which I used to give feedback on students’ written work. I thought this could be useful for online students, as the opportunities they have for authentic listening can sometimes be limited in this learning context. These students may also receive screencast feedback during their postgraduate course, so experiencing it over the summer would provide useful familiarisation.

The case study 

The class I used screencast feedback with included 12 students, all of whom were from China and going on to study an MSc in Accounting and Finance, or Accounting, Finance and Management. In Week 4 of the course, myself and my partner teacher, Zenna Marshall, provided formative feedback to half of the class each. Zenna gave written feedback on OneNote, as per the previous weeks, while I recorded screencasts using the Vimeo Chrome extension screen recorder.

Following this, a survey was distributed to students to glean their opinions of the different modes of feedback. Just one student placed ‘screencast feedback’ within their top two preferred modes of feedback, while four placed it in their two least preferred. Their comments indicated possible drawbacks of screencast feedback, with multiple mentions that it is less easy to access: “because maybe it is not convenient to review and find key information repeatedly”, and “Because my hearing is poor, I need to watch it repeatedly to understand it without subtitles”. This presents some important considerations for teachers in their use of screencast feedback, such as their speed of speech, as well as support students may need to be able to fully access the content of screencasts.

Following on from this, students were given the choice of written or screencast feedback on their next piece of formative work. Two out of six students chose the latter, indicating that while there had been significant challenges for some students receiving screencast feedback, there had been some benefits for others. My partner teacher Zenna also gave screencast feedback to students who had not initially received it in week four.

After this second set of feedback, another survey was shared with students to gain a more detailed understanding of their opinions. Figure 1 illustrates answers from nine students, suggesting that although screencast feedback was not ranked highly as their preferred mode of feedback in the first survey, many of them did in fact find it useful.

The students’ explanations of what they liked about screencast feedback indicate specific aspects that they valued, represented in Figure 2. Most of these indicate the interactive nature of the screencasts, in that they felt they were “having a conversation” with the teacher, or the teacher was “talking with you”. Several comments link this conversational aspect to a better understanding of the feedback itself. One student wrote: “it is easier for me to find where my teacher wants to focus and what my problems are”, while others described the screencasts as “more clear” than other forms of feedback. These comments suggest that screencast feedback not only has interpersonal value, but could also benefit students’ understanding of teacher feedback.

In terms of criticisms of the screencast feedback, just one student provided a comment: “I can just put the writing feedback into the portfolio immediately, it can save some time.” This reflects the comments from the first survey on the limited ‘convenience’ of screencast feedback, indicating a product-focused approach among some students. These students may have felt pressured due to deadlines and workload, and wanted to be able to copy and paste teacher feedback comments as evidence of their development in their portfolios.

While this is understandable, it suggests that alongside screencast feedback, students may need support in strategies to make full use of it. Fletcher (2022b) suggests encouraging students to take notes during screencasts so that they engage more deeply while listening and have a written record to return to in future. This could help them to deal with the challenges of understanding the screencasts that my students highlighted in the first survey. Developing their listening and note-taking skills would also transfer usefully to lectures on their future degree course.

The wider picture 

My students’ comments about screencast feedback are largely reflected in the literature. For example, Anson, Dannels, Laboy, and Carneiro (2016) found that screencast feedback was more conversational in style, which helped students feel more engaged. Fletcher (2022b) found this to be a key pattern in his students’ comments on screencast feedback, who identified the feeling of ‘talking it through with my tutor’ as a main advantage. His students compared the screencast feedback to being in a one-to-one meeting with their tutor, and described it as more engaging and interactive. They also noted that hearing the teacher’s voice increased their understanding of feedback. These comments closely align to my own students’ opinions, whereby the interpersonal aspect of screencast feedback seems to be closely linked to the depth of their comprehension of the feedback itself.

As others have noted, it is interesting that students compare screencast feedback to having a conversation with their tutor, as in fact no dialogue is occurring (Mahoney, Macfarlane, and Ajjawi, 2019). This does not dampen its significance though, as the conversational tone of screencasts has been linked to reducing the hierarchical nature of the teacher-student relationship (Cunningham, 2017). While the language of written feedback tends to maintain the authority of the teacher, screencast feedback often contains more suggestions and advice (ibid). This highlights the need to understand feedback from a socio-cultural perspective, whereby it is seen as a social process between teacher and learner, in which power, emotion and discourse are bound up with the content and reception of the feedback (Mahoney, Macfarlane, and Ajjawi, 2019). When there is a relationship of respect and trust between teacher and learner, it is more likely students will not only better engage with immediate feedback, but also be more effective at managing their own learning in future (Cunningham, 2017). This indicates that perhaps screencast feedback could be particularly helpful for pre-sessional and foundation programme students, who need to develop autonomous-learning skills for their subsequent degree courses.

Limitations 

The clear limitation of this case study is that it is based on very few students who had only some experience of screencast feedback over the course. It is also possible that the novelty of trying out an unfamiliar mode of feedback could have affected my students’ reactions. I therefore intend to continue using screencast feedback over a longer in-sessional course, and to collect student feedback regularly, as Fletcher (2022a) suggests. In addition to any benefits of the screencast feedback itself, I believe the process of experimentation and reflection will help my students engage with how they learn and develop their awareness of how they engage with feedback.

Recommendations 

1. Be careful to focus on quality rather than quantity, so don’t let your screencasts become too long. Arias (2015) suggests five to ten minutes, while Fletcher (2022a) recommends five to fifteen minutes. My videos were in the six-to-eight-minute range.

2. In a similar vein, Fletcher (2022b) warns against overelaborating. I saw the screencasts as a chance to practice what I preach, in terms of being selective and concise. Bullet-pointing your ideas to keep what you say structured and clear is useful.

3. If you are unfamiliar with screencasts, try it out in small steps. For example, use a screencast to provide formative feedback to a whole group, or answer a consistent query (Fletcher, 2022b). I have used screencasts in the past for creating video explanations for common challenges, such as referencing or submission processes.

4. Read Fletcher’s (2022a) ‘Good Practice Guide’ for suggestions on how to get started with screencasting. Specifically, Mediasite’s Mosaic software is recommended for recording screencasts, and screencast-o-matic is easy to use, too.

5. Also read this case study (Arias, 2015) of using screencast feedback, which contains student feedback and an example screencast.

References 

Anson, C.M., Dannels, D.P., Laboy, J.I. and Carneiro, L., 2016. Students’ perceptions of oral screencast responses to their writing: Exploring digitally mediated identities. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 30(3), pp.378-411. 

Arias, B. 2015. Case study: Audio and video feedback. [online] Available at: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/digital-education/case-studies/pre-2018/audio-and-video-feedback-using-mdr/ [Accessed 14 September 2022]. 

Cunningham, K.J., 2017. Appraisal as a framework for understanding multimodal electronic feedback: Positioning and purpose in screencast video and text feedback in ESL writing. Writing & Pedagogy, 9(3). 

Cunningham, K.J. and Link, S., 2021. Video and text feedback on ESL writing: Understanding attitude and negotiating relationships. Journal of Second Language Writing, 52, p.100797. 

Elola, I. and Oskoz, A., 2016. Supporting second language writing using multimodal feedback. Foreign Language Annals, 49(1), pp.58-74. 

Fletcher, L. 2022a. How to screencast: a good practice guide for dialogic feedback to students. [online] Available at: https://bilt.online/seencast-good-practice-guide/. [Accessed 14 September 2022]. 

Fletcher, L. 2022b. Encouraging Conversations: screencasts at the heart of dialogic feedback. [webinar] [online]. Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching. Available at: https://mediasite.bris.ac.uk/mediasite/Showcase/bilt/Presentation/0479e8e69b7044b1a5be709612694e5c1d/Channel/8c8587bec0844588a9b65a944dc944d65f [Accessed 14 September 2022]. 

Hattie, J. and Timperley, H., 2007. The power of feedback. Review of educational research, 77(1), pp.81-112. 

Mahoney, P., Macfarlane, S. and Ajjawi, R., 2019. A qualitative synthesis of video feedback in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 24(2), pp.157-179.