• Leeds Met’s Assessment, Learning and Teaching Conference;
• the Association for Learning Technology conference (ALT-C) in Leeds;
• a research seminar at the ExPERT Centre (the Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning – CETL), Portsmouth University;
• an Engineering Subject Centre event at Cardiff University.

• usually gives plenty of feedback;
• writes slowly but speaks fluently;
• is used to the technology.

This probably won't make much difference to folks who usually read the postings here. I'll continue to syndicate the blog to the Emerge community but, from now on, the feed will come from the new source.

And now it’s public. Sounds Good has been shortlisted for a Times Higher award in the category for ‘outstanding contribution to innovation and technology’. “Wow, I’m amazed!” was my reaction when I was told. The team here at Leeds Met is delighted, of course.

Thanks, colleagues, for all your hard work giving audio feedback to our students. It’s not easy being a pioneer. Thanks, too, for enduring my incessant email briefings and requests for information. The project would be nowhere without you.

There’s no time to rest on our – maybe – laurels, though. We’re already spending the second tranche of JISC money building on our experience, helping more Leeds Met staff begin to use audio for assessment feedback, introducing the tools and techniques in three other institutions, and continuing to spread the (spoken) word.

What will happen at the awards ceremony on 23 October? The easy bit is to predict that lots of folks will be done up in their finery and will have a great time. Beyond that, we’ll have to wait and listen. Either way, Sounds Good feels good.

(Posted by Bob Rotheram)

(Posted by Simon Thomson, Deputy Project Manager & Webmaster, Sounds Good)

I have been very fortunate in this project that the Project Manager has been very active and instrumental in providing content for the blog. Although I did indeed populate the basic construction of the site it has been Bob who has continually refreshed the blog content and podcasts. I think that this process of adding blog entries, while might be viewed as a requirement of the project, has also been an important tool in allowing reflection, communicating progress and generally publicising the project beyond local boundaries.

Personally I feel disappointed with myself that I did not contribute more blog entries (although I did upload most of Bob’s as I was the only person able to access the site administration so I did have a little part to play) and for the next stage of the project I am determined to engage in this process a lot more.

As food for thought, I wondered whether it might be appropriate to allocate all team members a week in which they will be expected to contribute a blog entry for inclusion in the site. Some might view this as a rather draconian approach but personally it would ensure that I did indeed contribute at least one entry for the site.

Bob and I are currently in discussion as to how we might present the next iteration of our site, should we even maintain a blog? Do we need podcasts? What about adding images and video?

If you have any suggestions as to how you would like to see us communicate our project development please add your comment below or email me at s.thomson@leedsmet.ac.uk

Why do we keep a Sounds Good blog? Because we have to, that’s the simple answer. For projects in JISC’s Users and Innovation (U&I) programme, maintaining a ‘reflective blog’ is part of the deal. Would Sounds Good do it if it weren’t expected? I’m not sure.

The U&I programme manager hasn’t been prescriptive about project blogs, thank goodness. So there have been no diktats about the frequency, length or nature of postings. I’ve felt our project team has had the freedom to post (or not) what it wanted, provided it put something into the public domain now and again. Fine, but from my vantage point as project manager, the main problem has been what to publish. Do I encourage the team each to upload a daily bare-your-soul, ‘Dear diary’ stream of consciousness? Hmm, complete frankness might cause a few difficulties! Much easier, and safer, would be an occasional, short, highly-sanitised communiqué. But what a yawn that would be.

Not wanting to make enemies, create hostages to fortune, or send readers to sleep, I’ve gone for an approach somewhere between the extremes. I arrogated the role of editor and encouraged all 17 members of the Sounds Good team to add to the blog, via me. My intention with others’ contributions has been to be ‘light touch’. With my own, I’ve tried to publish something every couple of weeks on average. Not just anything, mind. The aim has been to make the postings worth reading, with a discernible element of reflection, not a whitewash but not warts-and-all either.

What’s happened? The bald facts are that, in the five months it has been running, the blog has 19 postings, not including this one. I have written 16 of them. These items have prompted 10 comments, two of which have been from me. The blog is also syndicated to the JISC ‘Emerge’ community at http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/leedsmetbob/weblog, where it has produced 11 further comments, including two from me. Most of my blog postings on the Sounds Good site have a parallel existence as podcasts. None of these has prompted any comments.

So it’s fair to say that most of the input has been from me. As for the response, there hasn’t been much, has there? I have no way of knowing how many people have been reading the blog or listening to the podcasts. I do know that the counter on the Sounds Good home page is showing 1043 hits at the time of writing but, if memory serves, 987 of them are down to me and my mother. [Joke] All in all, I’m very much the main contributor and there isn’t much evidence that we/I have been engaging with the public.

So is it worth it? Speaking personally and (for once) completely frankly, I’ve been quite enjoying writing, for several reasons. First, it has allowed me to do a bit of self-indulgent vanity publishing, something for which I criticise other bloggers but, hey, I’m a hypocrite! Second, the requirement to be reflective has made me think about various aspects of the project, which is no bad thing. Third, as it has turned out, I haven’t had to trouble my conscience by using buckets of whitewash to tell a positive story; the project really has been going pretty well.

On the other hand, who cares? Part of me suspects the readership is about the same as that of a typical academic paper: a dozen people and a dog or two. And what if the project hadn’t gone well? In particular, what if the ‘blogger-conscript’ truly had been a conscript, with all that usually implies – sullen, foot-dragging, minimal compliance with a bullying sergeant-major? What if the project had been struggling, or worse? What would have appeared in the blogosphere then?

JISC asked for a reflective blog. Why? What did they expect? Would they do it again? I think we should be told.

(Posted by Bob Rotheram, Project Manager, Sounds Good)

Focus groups are popular with researchers. Everyone is holding them! Personally, having been in a few myself, I’ve got reservations – mainly about what can happen when the group contains a dominant, highly-opinionated and apparently knowledgeable individual. Yet I could see a potential benefit of a student focus group on Sounds Good: a way of getting beyond the routine and rather superficial questionnaires we were issuing, asking students about their experience of receiving audio feedback on their coursework. It seemed worth a try, so I built it into the project design.

I consulted the staff team who were actually giving students the audio feedback. When would be a convenient time to hold a focus group? How should it be publicised? Inevitably the answers varied, but I went for a compromise on the timing: 4pm on a Monday in a week when classes were winding down but exams had not started. The publicity – clear and friendly, I thought, with assurances about confidentiality – was issued several weeks in advance via the staff team, inviting interested students to get in touch with me. The incentives – about which, looking back, I didn’t consult – were a £30 book token and light refreshment, for an hour and a half of their time. That would do it, surely. I would be spoilt for choice!

Er, no. Of the 400+ students who received audio feedback about their work, only one contacted me to say he would come to the focus group. So I cancelled it.

Does this only happen to me? I’ve since spoken to several people about it and drawn some comfort from their comments that it is difficult to lure students to focus groups these days. But were they just being nice to me? Have you succeeded where I failed? If so, how did you do it?

(Posted by Bob Rotheram, Project Manager, Sounds Good)