We all know how fundamentally important it is to give meaningful feedback to pupils. They need to know what their comparative strengths are, what skills they should prioritise for improvement and how to go about creating this change.
Feedback can be provided through a variety of channels, including scribbled notes in a jotter, typed comments and verbal learning conversations. Each of these has its merits and drawbacks.
Recently I have been trialling the use of audio feedback with my English class. Essentially this means sending them a voice note or a recording with personalised feedback on their essays, rather than providing written comments either by hand or digitally.
I tried this approach with different essays, recording audio notes that ranged from two to four minutes in length, depending on the student.
My motivation behind this was twofold: I find lengthy handwritten or typed feedback comments quite time-consuming; and I suspect that students often skim-read written feedback and are mainly only interested in their “score”, without reflecting on how they can improve their skills.
Giving audio feedback to students
The impact for staff
There are multiple benefits to this approach that staff will enjoy:
- Providing audio feedback feels more time-efficient and can be done remotely through Teams, either at home, in school or on the move.
- It is easy to praise specific lines or paragraphs in a student’s essay through quick references (for example, “at the bottom of page 1” or “in paragraph 4”), which means comments are very pinpointed and individualised.
- Using vocal techniques such as pauses and tone means that feedback can be more personalised and non-threatening, showing compassion or enthusiasm. The nuances of our voice when giving our praise, or suggesting improvements, are difficult to replicate in a written note.
- It is simple to offer improvements to written work (“you could have added” or “next time try to express it this way”), which helps students to visualise the next steps.
- Comments can be focused on shared success criteria, while teachers can easily echo messages previously shared in class (“last week we discussed” or “look back at this page in your textbook”).
The impact for students
I believe that audio feedback also offers multiple benefits for students, including:
- They engage with their feedback in a more personal way, thus developing a greater comprehension of their teacher’s suggestions for improvement.
- It encourages further discussion during lessons: students may feel more connected with audio feedback that they see as an interaction with their teacher that they can collaborate with and reply to.
- Students focusing on the identification of skills for improvement rather than a score encourages them to think about their progress more deeply.
- Audio feedback can be replayed and reviewed multiple times, and at later dates, when students are undertaking a further draft or subsequent essay.
- Those for whom reading can be a barrier, such as students who are dyslexic, may find audio feedback more accessible than detailed written comments.
What the learners think
Following the trial with my students, I asked them to engage in some evaluation. Through some simple questions, I was able to source some initial impressions.
A large majority thought their audio feedback was easy to understand. They felt confident that, as a result of the feedback, they knew the strengths in their writing and what they needed to work on to improve.
Most also responded that they preferred audio feedback compared with handwritten, typed or verbal feedback through conversation.
There are, of course, a couple of considerations for improvement and there are some issues that might derail this approach.
If students are receiving audio feedback from all of their teachers, would this constitute overkill? Would they be able to keep on top of all these voice notes? An additional concern: will parents happily get on board with this approach, rather than traditional red-pen comments?
Overall, I feel it’s clear that audio feedback offers high-quality, individual feedback to students - and in less time than it takes to produce detailed written feedback.
Alan Gillespie is principal teacher of English at Fernhill School, an independent school near Glasgow. He tweets @afjgillespie
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