Personalizing feedback for feed-forward opportunities utilizing audio feedback technologies for online students

As educational delivery through online media continues to grow, so too do the demands on educators to provide quality learning outcomes for their online students. This paper presents a small research study undertaken to explore and evaluate the provisi on of audio feedback to a diverse group of online students studying with an Australian university. To determine the effectiveness of this type of feedback, research was undertaken with both undergraduate and postgraduate students who were invited to complete an anonymous survey on their views and experiences of feedback on their assessment tasks. Students were asked to compare feedback from traditional hand delivered comments and audio comments through both quantitative and qualitative questions. The results from this study indicate students want feedback not only to provide constructive criticism on current work, but also guidance on how to improve on future work, i.e. feed-forward. Results indicated a fair to strong preference by students to receive audio feedback for their submitted assessment tasks. The study also revealed that innovative ways such as audio commentary can be used by educators to successfully provide online students with informed personalized feedback in a timely manner