Sean Banville's Blog

Progress reports

I have found that providing students with progress reports via audio files is a very motivating alternative to providing written feedback on their progress. Generally, I do both. I am required to enter written feedback in the online records kept for my students. However, there are several things that don’t overly excite me about this:

1. I sometimes find them to be overly formal and (on occasion) stilted.
2. They occur too infrequently – usually mid- and end-of-semester – to provide students with useful information.
3. They can (on occasion) fall prey to ticking-the-boxes syndrome and thus can (on occasion) not be so overly heartfelt.

Now…

This is why I like giving audio files to students as progress reports.

Reasons for this are:

1. It gets students to practice authentic and relevant listening. They have a real reason to listen and are usually extremely motivated to do so.
2. It is more relaxed than the formal, college-required progress reports.
3. You can make the feedback fun and irreverent.
4. You can (on occasion) say things that you could never put online.
5. You can really personalize it.
6. Their parents don’t know about the audio files (Shhh!!) whereas parents usually see the more formal written progress reports.
7. You can say a WHOLE LOT MORE in an audio file than you could ever write in a formal written report (unless you wanted to dedicate your winter break to progress-report writing).
8. You can do it very often. It’s not overly difficult to do every two weeks. Would love to do it every week, but…
9. It’s quick – You can do progress reports for a class of 20 in 30 minutes.
10. Students really appreciate the personalization and extra effort.
11. The effect of the feedback can be extremely immediate– you can almost guess from a student’s face which part of their feedback they are listening to.
12. Providing lots of enthusiastic praise in the audio files works wonders.
13. I have found students like to listen to each other’s feedback more than they would read it.
14. You can easily tailor it to those who need it more.
15. It really gets you thinking more about your students, what they need and how they are doing.
16. You can provide the class with a global feedback file on how they’re doing collectively in addition to individual files.
17. Giving students audio files can encourage students to respond – either via their own mp3 or in writing.
18. It makes me appear more human to them (I think – could be wrong).
19. Given regularly, it really comes part of a system of monitoring progress.
20. It’s fun – Students like it.
21. They can reciprocate and give you mp3 feedback.

In the upcoming semester, I’d like to try and provide this kind of progress reporting using VoiceThread. I’m sure students will respond so much more to the threaded audio format than the clunkier option of mailing the audio file or leaving it on shared drives. It would be nice to have more of a conversation with the students using media they are so comfortable and familiar with using.

Will keep you posted.

PS I use the free audio editor/recorder from Audacity. It’s pretty much like MS Word except for sound and not letters (you record, copy, paste and save!).

The Audacity manual is here.

Here are some YouTube tutorials on how to record and how to edit.