To be at its most powerful, screencast should be integrated into your teaching practice. It must be strategic, not just tactical. It should be more than occasional one-off screencast transactions – as fun and effective as those can be! So, to optimise your use of screencast, I offer the following ‘critical success factors’. If you include these when designing your course, you will be well on the way to creating a feedback system that is sustainable, and that makes a difference to students.
I’ll assume here that one critical success factor is already in place: that you are reasonably confident and competent in using screencast, and that you buy in to the dialogic approach to feedback. If that’s the case, then let’s begin…
Design for dialogic touch points, not just screencast
Screencast can be dialogic. But it’s only one form of feedback. You should aim to create rich learning conversations that run like threads throughout your course, using different feedback forms at different points in time and place. This requires designing your feedback approach in a systematic and integrated way.
Think about how the different ‘parts’ of your teaching and learning ‘system’ interact. Find ways for a variety of feedback approaches to reinforce each other. Match them to the situation and the broader context, and connect them with your subject, assessments, and teaching style. What opportunities for feedback are there during the term? Which forms of feedback will work best and in which situations?
Offer multiple feedback ‘touch points’ with students. Some of these can be screencast, others could be in-class discussions, peer-to-peer feedback, polls, surveys, discussion boards, or sticky notes. Tailor these to the specific learning activities and assessments. For example:
- Use ‘Sticky Feedback’ to elicit input from students about their learning in general: ask them to write on sticky notes about what is working well, what isn’t, what more can be done to support their learning? Either hand out sticky notes in class every week or two, or keep an online app open all the time, where you can curate and respond to the notes as they come in.
- Invite students to critique an anonymised response to an assessment. Prompt discussion in class by asking students to reflect how their ‘marking’ of the assignment helps them understand the grading criteria and what they would have done differently. Capture any confusions or questions that emerge, and resolve these in plenary or group-level conversations.
- Have students review each other’s work-in-progress, such as an essay outline or a research plan. Have them apply the assignment briefs and assessment criteria to provide constructive feedback. Hold a plenary to capture key themes, issues, or concerns so you can provide further guidance or clear up confusions.
(For more detailed guidance, see ‘Section 12: Not just for feedback: ideas for multiple dialogic touch points’ in the screencast guide.)
Take account of your context
Make sure your approach to dialogic feedback is congruent with any institutional requirements. Consider level-specific assessment criteria and any policies on style, frequency, and timeliness of feedback. For example, at the University of Bristol Business School, we have produced a ‘feedback baseline’. This sets out principles, requirements, and guidance for faculty to optimise feedback to students. There are a few ‘must haves’, such as ensuring at least one opportunity each term for students to develop their understanding of assessment criteria in their class. But guidelines give lecturers the creative freedom to use feedback techniques that suit their subject area, course structure, and in-class learning activities. They can design their courses so that feedback is integrated in a way that can meet and go beyond the baseline.
Co-design feedback with your students
Engage your students early and often in dialogic feedback by inviting them to help you design and shape it. Set expectations at the start of your course by explaining your dialogic approach, its rationale, and how you will be using it. Encourage them into the conversation, not just to engage with your feedback to them, but for them to provide feedback to you on the feedback itself! What works well, what could be improved?
You could make this co-design as formal or informal as you like. The ongoing use of Sticky Feedback is a simple way to keep the conversation flowing, enabling you to make adjustments to teaching and content as you go. For more targeted design, you could recruit volunteers to undertake a specific piece of work. This could be aimed at improving a particular feedback practice (e.g., how can we make screencasts more useful and engaging?), or developing new ideas (how can we include more touch points in the course without creating extra staff and student workload?).
Get your team on board
You may be champing at the bit to use screencast within multiple feedback touchpoints in your class. But is the rest of your teaching team ready for this?! Talk to them about their skills, experience, and confidence in using these techniques. Train, coach, and encourage them, as needed. This can be particularly important if there are early career academics or postgraduate teaching assistants on your team. Two things are critical here:
- Everyone should be willing and able to use your feedback approach. While teaching styles and skills vary, especially within large teams, make sure that everyone can meet the requirements of your ‘baseline’ – for the sake of both fairness and effectiveness.
- Students should receive a broadly consistent feedback experience. If some students notice that one seminar group is getting screencast feedback, but they’re stuck with the same old written stuff – they will demand to know why (speaking from experience here!)!
Cultivate a Dialogic Culture
In designing your course for dialogic feedback, try to instil values that will help students engage with feedback effectively. You can set these out at the start of your teaching. These would include things like students and staff valuing openness, critical thinking, mutually supportive conversations, and developing an improvement mindset. In establishing a values framework, remember the feedback triangle: pay attention to the cognitive, structural, and social-affective dimensions to make them work for your feedback processes – screencast and the rest. The figure suggests how you can map key values onto the triangle.
