Transcript Slide 1

School of Education
and the Beyond Distance Research Alliance
An exploratory study of speech
styles in audio feedback
Diane Davies, Pamela Rogerson-Revell
and Gabi Witthaus
European Foundation for
Quality in E-Learning:
UNIQUe Award Winner
ALT Learning
Technologist of the
Year: Team Award
2009
DUCKLING project context
• Delivering University Curricula:
Knowledge, Learning & Innovation Gains
• Started in Jan 2009
• Funded by JISC for two years
• Three DL programmes in Social Sciences
www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/duckling
Challenges for DUCKLING
• Students felt distant and isolated – did not
feel connected to tutors or peers
• Time-poor students, time-poor staff
• Students wanted a greater variety of
approaches to curriculum delivery
DUCKLING technologies
Podcasting
E-book readers
Second Life
About the podcasts we’re using
• Produced by two tutors for individual
tutees (i.e. a case study with a small
sample)
• Commenting on draft dissertation work
• Not the only form of feedback used, i.e.
tutors also gave written feedback and
annotated the drafts using the ‘insert
comment’ function in Word
Language variation and academic
discourse
• Domain of discourse: activity involved
(e.g. meeting; research paper)
• Tenor of discourse: relationship between
speaker and addressee (tutor and
student; tutor and colleague)
• Mode of discourse: effects of the medium
of communication (face-to-face
conversation; email etc)
Effects of mode: ‘typical’ speech
• Inexplicitness and vagueness (‘and all that’,
‘sort of’)
• Looser clause structure (coordinated clauses
with ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘or’)
• Normal disfluency (‘er’, ‘erm’, false starts and
reformulations)’
• Features reflecting informality (contracted
forms; non-technical, accessible vocabulary)
‘Typical’ writing
• Explicit (e.g. legalistic discourse)
• Clear sentence boundaries
• More complex clause structure (greater
use of subordination)
• Fluency
• Features reflecting formality
(nominalisation; avoidance of idiomatic
language or slang)
Audio feedback as discourse
• Domain: feedback on draft dissertations,
i.e. major part of the course
• Tenor: tutor needs to relate to the
student as both ‘expert judge’ and
‘supportive guide’
• Mode: tutor speaks from notes but
doesn’t follow a script ; may or may not
edit the recording
Our focus
What linguistic choices (grammatical,
phonological etc) are made in audio and
written feedback with regard to:
• giving support and reducing social
distance
• giving negative feedback
• giving positive feedback/praise
Example 1:Support in opening phase
Tutor B Student 6 Introduction
so what I try to do/ in these –podcasts/ – is to add
some/ explanation to the comments\ -to bring them to
life/ - if you like really/ -- to add emphasis/ and tone
\-so- if you have made/ a horrendous error/ -which I’m
sure you haven’t \- then I can point you in that
direction\
Example 2: Positive feedback
• Tutor A to Student 2
…this is a 'great 'draft ' research re'port..erm./.it’s
'obviously had..erm.. a 'great deal of work on it/ and
you’ve got a fan'tastic a'mount of 'relevant 'research
and 'theory /.so the actual content that you’ve got/ is
all 'very good..m./.I love the way you 'justified your
hy'potheses /in..in terms of theo'retical and 'practical
impli'cations /so 'all of that is' really good /…the aim of
this feedback /is just to help you use all the 'content
and hard work that’s gone into your draft 'research
re'port/ to 'strengthen the 'arguments that you’ve
made/ and the justifi'cations and the 'impact of your
a'nalysis…
Example 3: Negative feedback
Tutor A to Student 2
In terms of the introduction/ -- the main comment/ - is around/ the
order in which you present all the information/ - within your introduction\
-- and -- how and where/- you define your terms and concepts\ --and
you’ll see from the comments in there/-- I think you need to take a step
back and almost map out/ -- the flow of the story/ that you’re trying to
tell in the introduction\ - and think about/ –which bits/ need to come
before other bits/ so that when you discuss those latter bits/- they make
more sense/ - because you’ve already covered/ --the other concepts/ terms/ - theories etc that are relevant to that bit\
Example 4: Negative feedback
Tutor A Student 1
some of the specific comments I’ve got/ -- in the introduction\ - are around the
way you talk about the theories of job satisfaction\ -and the measures leading up
to justifying your research questions\ - and I think in these sections/ - that you
could be a little bit more critical/ – about --the different theories that you
review/ - in light of the contexts/ that you want to use them for\ - so at the
moment/ -- the sections on/ - the –theories of - job satisfaction/- and - the
measures that are used/ for job satisfaction\ are quite descriptive\ --and I think
what you need to do/ - is to- talk about them/ and evaluate them\ – in ‘respect to
the context/ that you are using them in\
Example 5: Tutor sharing experience
Tutor B to Student 6
..the other con'cern I had in this 'section/ was 'why you’d split age
'and 'tenure into cate'gorical groups/ …'that doesn’t seem to make
'logical sense to me / because it ..it.'.wastes 'variance/ …there’s
'variance with'in a con'tinuous 'variable/ like the raw 'data on age
/ that is 'lost if you 'split it into 'two groups /..so..for ex'ample
'everybody who’s over 'forty / gets 'treated the 'same re'gardless of
whether they’re forty-'one or fifty-nine/ …so there’s a
com'pression of 'variance there/ …now I’ve come up against this
'issue / in a 'paper that I wrote for a 'research 'journal a couple of
years ago/ …and it’s fairly easily solved really/ …'all you need to
do / is change the 'ANOVA to an 'ANCOVA / and in'clude age as a
co-'variate/ …so it still 'tests the hy'pothesis that you’re 'interested
in/ but it just does it in a 'slightly 'different way/ that re'tains the
'variance…
Some findings
• Mix of written and spoken feedback is ‘best of
both worlds’
• Maintains detail and integrity of academic
content (not just an informal ‘chat’)
• Adds clarification, exemplification,
• Enables personalisation
• Enables nuance through tone etc – e.g. gives
negative criticism supportively; gives positive
feedback more emphatically
Summary
• Tutors in our sample strike a balance between
their role as ‘expert’ and ‘guide’.
• Students gain through the interconnected
modes of audio and written feedback
• Empowering for students as the distance
between tutor and student is reduced
• Particularly valuable for dissertation work
Beyond Distance Research Alliance
Learning Futures Festival Online 2010
Positively Disruptive
7-14 January 2010
www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/festival
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dr Stephen Bax, Professor Phil Candy, Aly Conteh, Dr Chris Davies,
Stephen Downes, Professor Ian Jamieson, Professor Josie Taylor, Tessa Welch
Festival registration: £75 / closing date: 23 December 2009
European Foundation for
Quality in E-Learning:
UNIQUe Award Winner
ALT Learning
Technologist of the
Year: Team Award
2009