Audio Files in the Online Writing Classroom

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Audio Files in the Online Writing Classroom

• Give Yourself, and Your Students, a Break

Andy Cavanaugh
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Common Methods of Commenting on Student Papers
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Track Changes
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Advantages and disadvantages

• Provides a pleasant color-coded appearance that
  allows students to zero in on specific problems
• If many comments are made, the paper can look
  daunting for the student
• Typing all of your comments can be tiresome

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Insert Comment
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Advantages and Disdvantages

• The paper is not so colorful
• Typing all of your comments can be tiresome

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Using an audio file
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Listen

• Click here.
• What are your thoughts?

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What the literature says...
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• Obviously, providing feedback to inexperienced
  writers that goes beyond just evaluating and
  grading necessitates quite a bit of work and
  results in a lot of writing. With frustration, I
  found before using embedded voice commenting that
  many students receiving only written feedback
  often ignored it, did not understand it, or
  sometimes felt overwhelmed by it. A few
  complained that I was too critical, that I found
  things wrong in so many places that they did not
  feel as if they could do enough to make their
  documents better (Still, 2006)

Brian Still, Assistant Professor of Technical
Communication, Department of English, Texas Tech
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• Obviously, providing feedback to inexperienced
  writers that goes beyond just evaluating and
  grading necessitates quite a bit of work and
  results in a lot of writing. With frustration, I
  found before using embedded voice commenting that
  many students receiving only written feedback
  often ignored it, did not understand it, or
  sometimes felt overwhelmed by it. A few
  complained that I was too critical, that I found
  things wrong in so many places that they did not
  feel as if they could do enough to make their
  documents better (Still, 2006)

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• What I have found since using embedded voice
  commenting is that it works. The greatest benefit
  for me is that I can say almost as much as I want
  without having to type all of it. And for those
  assignments that are more difficult for students
  and require more feedback, such as instructions,
  I can provide more assistance with 3 or 4 minutes
  of voice comments than I can with a few lines of
  written comments here or there, especially if I
  want to offer suggestions for improvement but not
  actually make the edits for them (Still, 2006).

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• Students sometimes have just cut and pasted my
  written comments into the bodies of their
  documents, assuming that that would fix the
  problems my comments noted. Such an approach does
  not work with voice comments. Students must
  listen, digest, and think about how my ideas can
  help them revise the documents on their own
  (Still, 2006).

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Audio commentssave teachers time

• Sommers (2002) argues I have found that a
  teacher speaking at a conversational pace for two
  minutes produces one page of double-spaced text
  if transcribed. In all, I spoke to the student
  on the tapes five times for a total of twenty
  minutes the resulting transcripts of the tapes
  added up to ten pages of writing, each 250 words
  in lengthIt is hard to conceive that anyone
  could compose and type or write 175 words in two
  minutes (p. 175).

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Audio commentssave teachers time

• Because I am able to make more comprehensive
  comments, I do not have to explain and re-explain
  my ideas to each student after class and in
  office hours
• Johanson, 1999, p. 4
• On average, it took 2.6 minutes to tape and 3.1
  minutes to write comments per page after having
  read a paper one time
• Pearce and Ackley, as cited in Huang, 2000, p. 6

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Written comments are often difficult for
students to understand

• Wiltse (2001) argues that students, when
  receiving written comments, may be confused and
  not understand the feedback and that overeager
  students may misinterpret the comments and make
  new errors on second drafts in response to
  written comments (p. 3).
• Johanson (1999) says that teacher-student
  conferences would reveal a major gap of
  understanding between what I thought I was saying
  in my written comments and how they were
  perceived by my students (p. 4).

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Written comments are often difficult for
students to understand

• Boyden-Knudsen (2001) maintain that students
  wrote about their concerns of not completely
  understanding all their errors when receiving
  written feedback on their compositions (p. 5)

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Written comments are often difficult for
students to understand

• A study by McCune (2004) on student response to
  written feedback given to them in first-year
  composition courses showed that a few of the
  students mentioned that they had some problems in
  reading or interpreting the feedback, although
  they found the feedback reasonable (p. 257). In
  addition, interviews showed that the students
  were able to describe what feedback was written
  on their essays, but were unable to discuss this
  in detail and generally gave the impression that
  they had not paid much attention to it (p. 268).
• However, the same study by McCune showed that
  tutors individual interactions with their
  students seemed to provoke important changes in
  the students conceptions, or ideas about
  understanding (p. 278).

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Audio comments are more thorough and clearer

• Johanson (1999) maintains Before using
  audio-feedback, I found it both time-consuming
  and frustrating to craft comments that were
  detailed enough to be understood and yet succinct
  enough to fit in the margins, but with audio
  comments, students can hear my difficulty
  understanding their motives in real time (p.
  6).

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Audio comments are more thorough

• Moreover, Kirschner, van den Brink, and Meester
  (1991) found that the length of the audiotape
  feedback is 1.7 times that of the written
  feedback (p. 192).
• The same authors found that subjects who received
  audiotape feedback noted advantages such as the
  intonation of the instructor made the feedback
  seem personal,it was an advantage to be able
  to reread the essay while listening to the
  comments and it was clearer than written
  feedback is (p. 192).

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Audio comments are more thorough

• Matsumuras (2002) conclusions were that, while
  more extensive commentary is more effective for
  students than less extensive commentary, in her
  study, the amount of content feedback
  studentsreceived was small (an average of one or
  two edits per 100 words) (p. 12).
• Lin (2001) says, Sometimes when the teacher is
  too busy, a simple general comment or grade is
  given to warn or encourage students whether their
  writing ability is poor or good (p. 543).

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Audio comments are more thorough

• Johanson (1999) says that with spoken comments,
  Instead of being forced to condense my comments
  in one digestible sentence in the margin, I could
  speak to each student as though he or she were
  in a face-to-face conference.

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Audio comments ofter superior tone to students

• Wiltse (2000) contends that written comments
  not only cause apprehension in students, but may
  paralyze their efforts to improve their writing
  in the future (p. 8).
• Johanson (1999) points out that the role of the
  instructor adjusts from that of a judge to that
  of a coach when transitioning from text-based
  to audio feedback (p. 5).

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Audio comments ofter superior tone to students

• Wiltse (2001) laments a weak writer who needs
  the most help but whose papers receive the most
  teacher comments may view the graded paper as a
  messy autopsy with the instructor as coroner
  (p. 9).

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Audio comments ofter superior tone to students

• We who teach composition stress the need to
  write to an audience, the need to anticipate the
  needs of the reader as we write, if we hope to
  communicate... By extension, then, just as we
  must always be aware of how our written messages
  will come across to our reader, so we must be
  equally aware of how our teaching message comes
  across to our students.... The humane instructor
  who would never sexually harass a student far too
  frequently thinks nothing of slicing open the
  students jugular with a sharpened pen... (Mellon
  Sommers, 2003).

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Excellent web sites

• http//www.users.muohio.edu/sommerjd/
• http//www.academiccommons.org/ctfl/vignette/digit
  ized-audio-commentary
• http//zircon.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/archives/
  lta45.php

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Study by Susan Sipplehttp//www.users.muohio.edu/
sommerjd/images/survey_results4.gif
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How to use Audacity to make an .mp3 file
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The document is available in WRTG 999

• Click here for the document from this slide show.

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A short demonstration on how to record an audio
file using Audacity was then given at the
conference.
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How to Insert Media Into your WebTycho Classroom

• http//marconi.umuc.edu/ramgen/SUS/comm/TStone_med
  ia.rm

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Responses from students

• I really like the method you use to respond to
  the student's essays. I find it very helpful.
  Even when I had to write essays in high school, I
  didn't get that much feedback. Usually my teacher
  would just write a sentence, maybe two under my
  essay. So I appreciate this!
• Thanks for the comments. That was pretty neat -
  I've taken so many DE classes, but this was the
  first time I ever heard someone's voice
• Thank you also for your comments on my 2nd draft
  of the narrative essay.  I appreciate your kind
  review and pointing out mistakes.
• Thank you for your dialogue on my essay. I found
  it extremely helpful. Your insight was great. It
  is hard to believe how easy you were able to
  break down my essay and point out all the ways to
  not only improve it, but take it to a higher
  level. Wow, I am quite impressed and mesmerized.
• Thank you for all the comments on my paper. They
  really helped me rewrite certain parts.

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Responses from students

• Thanks for the comments on the essays. It is a
  neat way to communicate. Im glad you are able
  to step out of the box. I felt it helpful if I
  read the paper as you commented, then made
  corrections in a different color ink and then
  went back over again a couple of times. Mp3
  allowed me to hear comments. I like it.
• Thank you for your comments on my narration
  essay. They were very helpful.  Will you also
  send comments on my compare/contrast essay in the
  new format you used? It worked very well.
• I have just listened to your comments about my
  essay. I want to thank you for your audio file.
  Online education is a very impersonal way of
  studying, and I have often found myself
  frustrated by the cut-and-dried typed comments I
  have received from teachers over the last two
  years. Putting them in an audio file made all the
  difference.

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How to use Microsoft's Recording Function to
make an .mp3 file
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Using just an audio file
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The following interface will appear
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Select the red record button
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Click the black stop button when you are
finished.
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Select save as under file.
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Select change at the bottom
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Choose MPEG Layer-3 from the drop-down menu.
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Change untitled to mp3.
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Click OK and name the file. Make sure that you
type .mp3 after the file name.
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The sound recorder will convert the audio file
into an mp3 file.

• An .mp3 file is about 1/10 the size of a .wav
  file.
• The reduced file size allows you to upload it to
  WebTycho for the student to access.

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