An investigation into students’ experiences and preferences for how information and feedback is presented in an online learning environment
Publish Date: Wednesday, 19 October 2022

Chris Parkin, Steven Woller

http://doi.org/10.34074/sitj.14104

Abstract 

While online learning was already a highly investigated topic, the need to swiftly pivot to an online or multi-modal delivery since the outbreak of COVID-19 (Stanistreet et al., 2021) has sparked a significant amount of additional research into digital delivery and feedback methods (Dhawan, 2020; Mukhtar et al., 2020). This research builds on previous work by investigating several different methods of providing feedback and new learning materials, and the effect on learners who are enrolled in a fully online learning environment. The central hypothesis was that learners preferred video over text-based feedback and felt more connected when using these methodologies. This was explored through provision of feedback in various digital formats with learners qualitative and quantitatively surveyed at the end of the course. Data showed that this was true for some learners but only just over half of the learners surveyed. It was also found that the learner's preference/s can be partly negated and/or offset by the increased time and effort needed to access and absorb the feedback. This aligns with other researcher's recommendations that video feedback needs to be provided in a manner that is easily accessible to students so that it does not negate the benefits of the increase in detail, precision, and higher order thinking (Holding et al., 2020).

 

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