Student Attitude to Audio Versus Written Feedback

First year Biology at the University of Glasgow consists of two courses, 1A and 1B, with an annual intake of 750-800 students. Both courses consist of lectures, practical lab sessions, tutorials and discussion groups. With such large numbers of students, teaching methods and delivery continually change and develop to ensure best delivery of the course content. As such, assessment and feedback systems also need to remain current and accessible to all. Timely, instructive and developmental feedback on student work is arguably the most powerful single influence on a student’s ability to learn. As part of the transition from school into university, feedback is a recognised method of maximising student potential (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). Research shows that increasing student numbers and associated rise in marking workloads, means that feedback can be slow in returning to the student and lacking quality/detail (Glover and Brown, 2006). From the markers perspective there is some evidence that students fail to engage with, misinterpret or ignore written feedback. We have carried out a pilot study to apply, and attempt to build upon, principles of good feedback practice to the assessment of coursework. To do this, an essay assignment was submitted online by Biology 1A students, marked and written feedback provided to all. A randomly selected group of students (10% of the cohort) also received audio feedback (electronic audio files were imbedded into the student work and returned to them by e-mail) on their submitted work. All students then completed an anonymous ‘Feedback’ questionnaire detailing their experiences with the feedback they received, with additional questions that were answered solely by the ‘audio group’ asking more specific questions about the effectiveness of the audio feedback. To carry out this study, new technologies were utilised and these will be demonstrated at the meeting along with the study conclusions. Hattie, J. and Timperley, H. (2007) The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81–112 Glover, C. and Brown, E. (2006). Written Feedback for Students: too much, too detailed or too incomprehensible to be effective? Bioscience Education, 7

Flipping the roles: Analysis of a university course where students become co-creators of curricula

In this paper I present the transformation of a university course inspired by the theoretical background of the student voice approach (Fielding, 2004a and 2004b; Cook-Sather, 2006) and, in particular, the ways students are encouraged to be \u201cco-creators of curricula\u201d through partnership with faculty (Bovill, Cook\u2010Sather & Felten, 2011). I introduce active learning practices centered on \u201cstudent generated content\u201d (Sener, 2007; Bates et al., 2012), allowing a new rendering of the traditional lesson cycle: frontal lesson, individual study, and final exam. The change in students\u2019 attitude towards study and final exam support the effectiveness of this methodology

Collaborative learning at engineering universities: Benefits and challenges

This paper concerns the cutting edge educational approaches incorporated into syllabuses of the most progressive Russian higher technical schools. The authors discuss one of the active methods in teaching foreign languages – collaborative learning implemented in e-courses. Theoretical and historical aspects of this approach are addressed, as are its suitability for engineering education and possible ways of introducing collaborative learning into e-courses. Collaborative learning technology offers wide prospects for teachers of foreign languages as it enables the use of various patterns of interaction, promotes discussion, opinion exchange, peer assessment and building an e-learning community, fosters the development of e-culture and netiquette, and prepares future specialists for work in their professional sphere under the new conditions imposed by society’s technological and cultural development. This paper describes real pedagogical experience of teaching English to students using the platform Moodle, focusing on the capacity of different Moodle instruments for designing group work tasks. Recommendations are given for their usage and the results of implementing a collaborative learning approach into certain e-courses offered at Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) are presented

INTEGRATING PEER FEEDBACK TO IMPROVE EFL LEARNERS WRITING PRODUCTION WITHIN ONLINE ENVIRONMENTS

التعبير الكتابي مهمة شاقة خاصة لمتعلمي اللغة الثانية أو الأجنبية، ولهذا هو فإن معظم متعلمي اللغة الإنجليزية كلغة أجنبية يعانون في اكتساب هذه المهارة. وبناء عليه فإن أي دعم نطوره لتحسين إنتاج كتابات متعلمي اللغة الإنجليزية كلغة أجنبية مرتبط بالتعلم التعاوني. ومما يساعد لبلوغ هذه الغاية، ظهور العديد من المناهج الإلكترونية التي تركز على المتعلم والتعلم التعاوني لتسهيل التعلم المتمحور حول الطالب. وهكذا فإنه في الدراسة الحالية، عمل الباحث على ملاحظات الأقران، كشكل من أشكال العمل العلاجي التعاوني للتكوين في مهارة التعبير الكتابي باستخدام تكنولوجيا المعلومات والاتصالات لتنفيذ أنشطة التعزيز التي من شأنها أن تحقق مساهمة الطلاب في تحسين أدائهم الكتابي. هذه الورقة لها طبيعة تجريبية. اعتمدت على مجموعة متنوعة من أدوات البحث. وفقًا للنتائج، كان هناك اتفاق عام على فائدة التجربة. بالنسبة للطلاب، فإن العمل بهوية مجهولة في مجموعة عبر الإنترنت يجعل الطالب يكتشف أشياء كثيرة ويقوده إلى مشاركة المعرفة مع الآخرين. قدمت النتائج دعمًا لفعالية تعليقات الأقران عبر الخط في تحسين جودة مقالات الطلاب المنقحة والجديدة، وبالتالي تشجيع المعلمين على استخدام هذه التقنية في فصول التعبير الكتابي الخاصة بهم.Writing is a demanding task especially for second or foreign language learners. That is why most of EFL learners are struggling with this skill. Any support we would develop towards improving EFL learners’ writing production should be related to collaborative learning. Besides, more electronic learner-centered and collaborative approaches have emerged to facilitate student-centered learning. Thus, in the present study, the researcher worked on peer feedback, as a form of collaborative remedial work of written composition using ICT to implement enhancement activities that are likely to bring about students’ contribution to improve their writing performance. This paper has an experimental nature; it relied on a variety of research tools. According to the findings, there was a general agreement upon the usefulness of the experience. For students, working anonymously in an online group makes one discover many things and leads one to share knowledge with the others. The findings gave support to the efficacy of technology-supported peer feedback in improving the quality of students’ revised and new essays, thus encouraging teachers to use this technique in their writing classrooms

A gentle transition from Java programming to Web Services using XML-RPC

Exposing students to leading edge vocational areas of relevance such as Web Services can be difficult. We show a lightweight approach by embedding a key component of Web Services within a Level 3 BSc module in Distributed Computing. We present a ready to use collection of lecture slides and student activities based on XML-RPC. In addition we show that this material addresses the central topics in the context of web services as identified by Draganova (2003)

Promoting learner autonomy through multiliteracy skills development in cross-institutional exchanges

This contribution presents findings from two empirical case studies, which followed a task-based telecollaborative learning format. Participants included student teacher trainees, tutors, and language learners from colleges/universities in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The projects aimed at promoting learner autonomy through awareness raising of modes and meaning-making online and multiliteracy skills development based on hands-on analysis of web resources and social networking tools. It was hoped that this awareness would foster the teachers' own autonomy in virtual learning environments and enable them to design tasks which—in turn—would promote learner autonomy as understood by Palfreyman (2006): the informed use of a range of interacting resources in context. We argue that this awareness is reflected in enhanced multimodal communicative competence, i.e., “the ability to understand the combined potential of various modes for making meaning” (Royce, 2002, p. 92), and multiliteracy, with the latter allowing teachers and learners to realize the potential of blended and online only settings for language acquisition purposes. Ideally then, while becoming gradually more versed in multimodality and multiliteracy, learners can also take over more control and self-direct their own learning when working online (Benson, 2001) which are also characteristics of autonomy