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News and Background Information on the Conference | |||
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The Talking Essay – Video Feedback for Students
 This method of giving feedback has proven to be highly valuable for both teachers and students. The feedback process is thus much more detailed, as the teacher can explain where the mistakes might have come from or suggest solutions. Students are enabled to review the feedback as many times as they need and can recognise the nature of the mistakes. Tests have shown so far that video feedback is especially helpful in language teaching, as the feedback can include information about syntax, grammar, spelling or choice of vocabulary. “We were actually looking for a more dynamic way of providing feedback. Research at the University had shown that students often misconceived feedback or did not even pay attention to the written notes at all”, explains Russell Stannard, who leads the project funded by the Educational Initiative Centre at the University of Westminster. The early results of the research are promising. Students have become much more enthusiastic about the feedback process. Feedback has become part of the writing process, and students re-submit their work after receiving the video feedback. The research team is now looking into ways of integrating the videos into different stages of the writing process. Students, for example, can submit an essay plan, receive feedback on it and then start writing the essay. In a second series of experiments, Stannard developed videos for general classroom feedback. “In one of my English courses, I realised that several students making a particular grammar mistake. I produced a feedback video that resembled a short grammar lesson, providing information about the point, writing up some examples and then sending it to all the students”, Stannard relates. This form of feedback has become particularly popular among instructors, freeing up valuable classroom time, as it eliminates the necessity of going through every single presentation or essay. The classroom feedback can also be made accessible for all students through a general learning management system such as Blackboard. Stannard is currently continuing his research with a group of 65 students by looking at the impact of this type of feedback on the learning process. Is this form of feedback easier to remember than the traditional method? What type of feedback should be provided, e. g. is it better to give feedback that points to the problem or is it better to give explicit answers and solutions? At OEB 2008, Stannard will share his findings in a session on Thursday, December 4, 14:00 – 16:00.  Russell Stannard Russell Stannard runs a popular training site for multimedia in teaching and training. His video tutorials aim at teachers who want to incorporate technology such as wikis, blogs, animations, audio or video material into their lessons. More information:www.russellstannard.com
September 2, 2008 |
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When students at Westminster University send in their essays on English for Academic Purposes, they do not receive the word file back with the usual red and blue correction marks or remarks made by the teacher. Instead, their lecturer Russell Stannard returns them a video where the whole feedback process is captured. They view the screen of the teacher’s computer, see “live” where he highlights or marks the work and, even more important, hear him explain what he is correcting.