A qualitative assessment of providing quality electronically mediated feedback for students in higher education

The subject of feedback for students is one of the most important\udcontributors to the student experience and attracts one of the lowest responses\udwithin the National Union of Students survey. This paper reports on the\udfeasibility of providing feedback on written assignments by marking\udelectronically using the comments function on Microsoft Word and also\udproviding verbal feedback via use of a hand held digital voice recorder. The\udstudents (post graduate part-time business students) were surveyed as to their\udresponse to this feedback. The paper reports the feedback from both the tutor\udand the student perspective and examines the impact on the experience of both\udgroups. The results were positively in favour of the use of audio feedback but\udare different to results in other studies in that it is concluded that a combination\udof both typed and verbal feedback was preferred by the students.\udKeywords: audio-feedback; feedback; written feedback; electronically\udmediated feedback; recorded feedback; online submission; assessment; student\udexperience; National Student Survey; NSS