Work at Bradford has involved staff from Health Care, Optometry, Business and Education investigating the use of audio to provide formative and summative feedback. Initial responses from both staff and students has been positive. Telephone interviews with Master level students in Health Care who had been provided with formative feedback on their work indicated that they felt that their audio feedback had a more personal touch than their usual written feedback. In Business, work has been underway to create a software application that enables tutors to link audio with written feedback through assigning both the same student ID number. Students on a distance learning course in Optometry have been part of an online learning community created by their tutor in Ning. Not only has this enabled them to collaborate and share ideas with each other, but they have also been able to access podcasts to support their learning. New and experienced lecturers taking part in a Post Graduate Certificate in HE Practice have themselves experienced what it is like to receive audio feedback on their assignments. It is hoped that this will encourage them to consider providing audio feedback for their own students.

At Hetfordshire, staff from Computing, Accountancy and Law have been involved in a one member of staff has been using audio within a wiki to support group-based assessment. This has involved both staff and students using audio. The response from the students has been excellent, with many of them sourcing their own tools to create and edit their audio contributions. In their reflective blogs, some students have also included audio files with their postings. In Accountancy, students have been involved in an assignment that required them to submit an audio recording of a discussion they had on an article entitled “The normative origins of positive theories: ideology and accounting thought”. Students were much more concerned about writing a 3000 group report than they were about recording a 6-8 minute discussion. In Law, staff created a podcast containing scripted scenarios involving breaches of the Solicitors Accounts Rules. Students were required to listen to this podcast in preparation for their next workshop session. In this workshop the students were split into groups of 3 or 4 and asked to create a second podcast. This included a formative assessment on the scenarios in the first podcast, a verbal narration of a Client Account Ledger and a reflective blog of their learning experiences during this project.

All in all, a busy and productive first 3 months.

The password is audio. 

The UALL community is using it to share our ideas on the project and to make a start on the structure and content of our bid. 

Feel free to contribute. 

If you were unable to attend the Manchester event but would like to take part in the project and contribute towards the writing of the bid, let me know and I'll set up editing rights for you.

Appologies for not making it to the workshops. I thought it might be useful to post some of my thoughts on here.

Much of the use of audio in our institution to date has been done on an individual and adhoc basis. I would like to develop a centrally supported strategy with technical guidance that will enable lecturers to engage with students using audio in a way that is accessible, user friendly, professional and in keeping with our corporate identity.

Things I would like to investigate are:

·         There are many audio formats available such as MP3, WMV, WAV, OGG, and so on. Which of these formats is the most appropriate? Should we aim for sound quality, file size, or most supported format?

·         Where should files be located and how should they be distributed? Should our audio be ‘Podcasted’ using an RSS Feed or iTunes? Should they be held on a website for students to download? Or should they all be held within the module area of the VLE? If a student is recording audio, how should they submit?

·         What can be done to ensure that the use of audio and its delivery/submission is as accessible as possible for students with disabilities? How can the use of audio help with the goal of widening participation? How can we improve usability?

·         How should the use of audio be structured? Should we use the traditional 50 minute Podcast of a lecture scenario, or should we use smaller chunks such as 5 – 15 minute “nuggets”?

·         Are there facilities, services and support that IT or lecture room services should be supplying in order to support academic use of audio for teaching and learning?

Is this of interest to others? Any comments or suggestions?

 Cheers,

 John