Podcasting: A tool for enhancing assessment feedback

Assessment is central to student learning and it is widely recognised that the potential to learn from assessment experiences is shaped greatly by the content of tutor feedback and student engagement with it. Technological innovations are providing new opportunities to alter the nature and delivery of assessment feedback, perhaps offering the potential to provide enhanced feedback, without necessarily increasing tutor workloads. This paper will summarise the details of a project completed within the Department of Geography and Development Studies at the University of Chester during the 2006-2007 academic year. The main purpose of the project was to explore how podcasts might be used to provide assessment feedback for students. The project focused on two different modules with dissimilar content and assessment exercises, although both having in common an e-learning component in the pre-existing teaching and learning strategy. One of the case study modules is at Level 1 with a student group of 24; the other a final year module with a class size of 26. The paper will report on both staff and student perceptions of podcast-based feedback, the latter collected through pre- and post-experience questionnaires and a focus group led by an independent facilitator. Whilst the subject-specific content of the case study modules is geography the lessons learned have wider applicability. The findings from this project point to a number of interesting technical and pedagogical issues