Teach Middle East Magazine Apr - Jun 2020 Issue 3 Volume 7 | Page 18

Sharing Good Practice
DIGITISING VERBAL FEEDBACK
AND REDUCING WORKLOAD FOR TEACHERS
BY: ABDUL CHOHAN
does challenge traditional approaches
to recording feedback on paper, and
creates opportunities to rethink what
is possible now, that was simply not
possible in the past. Simplicity and
reliability are key requirements for
any technology to be successfully
integrated into the classroom.
Teachers simply tap on the voice note
button and then tap on where they
would like to place the voice note.
T
he high impact of effective
feedback on learning is
consistently highlighted in
educational research (Hattie,
2009), yet providing pupils with
timely, personalised and accurate
feedback on a consistent basis is
time-consuming. 53% of teachers
responding to the Workload Challenge
cited the detail and frequency of
written marking required by their
schools as a burdensome task in a
survey carried out by the department
for education in the UK, (DfE, 2015),
and 68% of teachers say the time they
spend marking, impacts negatively on
the classroom time with pupils (Ward,
2016). The research evidence for the
specific impact of written marking,
however, is low (Elliot et al, 2016).
I have been working with leadership
teams in the UAE for the last 7 years
with the key focus of embedding
impactful use of technology for
learning and developing efficiencies
in and out of the classroom. The use
of mobile technology now allows us to
preserve the benefits of personalised
feedback while reducing teacher
workload. I have been piloting the
use of a tool called ‘Showbie’ with
a number of schools in the United
18
Term 3 Apr - Jun 2020
Arab Emirates with varying profiles.
Showbie allows teachers to ‘Mark up’
handwritten documents with multiple
digitised voice notes, delivered over
mobile devices instead of written
marking. Students still use pen and
paper to write, but when it comes to
‘handing in the book’ this is now done
in a digital fashion by taking a photo
and submitting it to the teacher.
Each student has their own folder
on the teacher’s device that the
photos save to, so it is very easy for
the teacher to navigate through the
work. If WIFI ever fails, documents
can be sent using the Airdrop facility
on iPad. Teachers are then able to
respond to the students’ work by
leaving multiple voice notes on a
document, as well as highlighting
individual errors by annotating the
photos. Students can respond with
voice notes and typed revisions and
can upload an improved piece to the
same folder using their device.
Over the last 8 years mobile
technology like the iPad have become
‘simple and reliable’ tools with
access to a plethora of educational
applications that require very little
professional development. However, it
Class Time
Recognizing that consistency is key
to the new approach, the focus for
training is not on the logistics of how
to use the mobile technologies, but
on the key components of effective
feedback - that it should be timely,
clear, understandable to the student,
and should provide strategies to help
the student to improve (Hattie, 2009).
Reducing Teacher
Workload
Schools have responded very positively
to the new approach, noting that it
takes them significantly less time to
give high quality verbal feedback over
the device than it did to write their
feedback by hand. Further impact
studies are being carried out with
schools in the UAE. The time savings
can enable teachers to have a better
work-life balance, but it gives them
more time to plan inspiring lessons
and adapt existing resources in
response to the work the students
have already produced.
Faster feedback
A further focus of the design was to
do with the impact on improving ‘the
quality of the interaction’ between
the student and the teacher, which
‘is at the heart of pedagogy’ (Black
and William, 1998, p16). Teachers at
some schools have spoken about how
they are coaching students remotely
with this very personalised approach.
Giving verbal feedback allows for the
use of emotion and emphasis, and