Video Grading: Enhancing Clarity and Connection

Introduction

Providing feedback to students is a crucial part of the learning process. As class sizes have increased and online education has become commonplace, feedback on assignments remain mainly summative with a focus on grade justification (West & Turner, 2016). Feedback should be in alignment with the goals, criteria, and expected standards of the assessment (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). For feedback to be utilized to help students succeed it must be meaningful, provided promptly, engaging to students, and relevant (Gibbs & Simpson, 2004). The traditional way to provide feedback to students is via comments on paper or digital comments within a document. Although these comments may fit many of the categories listed previously, it may not engage students. Previous research has found that written comments make up 79% of feedback received by students (Gibbs & Simpson, 2004).

High-quality feedback can be difficult to define, but the simple act of providing feedback has been shown not to improve or promote students outcomes (Lew, Alwis, & Schmidt, 2010). In a literature review, Evans (2013) provides elements of “pragmatic” feedback which include providing the student with “ … clear and focused feedback on how students can improve their work including signposting the most important areas to address” and “ensuring support is in place to help students develop self-assessment skills … ” (p. 79). For professional disciplines, providing constructive feedback has two aims: the first to promote learning and the second to demonstrate professional problem solving and peer feedback techniques for the discipline (Altmiller, 2016).

It is widely accepted that the purpose of feedback to students should be to help students close the gap between their actual performance and desired performance (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). Students can take on an emotional response to feedback (Ryan & Henderson, 2018) which causes students to perceive the instructor or themselves negatively, and as such, providing feedback in a way that allows for the purpose and context of the feedback to be understood can help alleviate negative emotional responses to feedback (Ryan & Henderson, 2018). One of the barriers to effective feedback is that some students do not feel that they can interact with their lecturer due to their confidence level and a lack of established relationship with their lecturer (Poulos & Mahony, 2008).

High-quality feedback also poses a challenge for the educator who has large amounts of papers to review or must provide performance-based feedback, as it relates to clinical or task skills that need to be demonstrated for a course. Feedback is more than a sharing of information; it is the ability to communicate with the student about the fundamentals of academic or professional writing as well as the students’ ability to demonstrate the cognitive and affective domains as described by Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956). Clearly communicating feedback has many barriers including students’ emotional responses to receiving feedback, their contextual understanding, and comprehensibility. Verbal feedback has been shown to improve student’s understanding of the context of the feedback making for greater comprehension (Knauf, 2016).

Student course satisfaction has been linked to timely feedback that is extensive in nature and that meets the student’s perception of quality feedback (Robinson, Pope, & Holyoak, 2013). An issue in higher education is how students understand feedback, and therefore, how they make sense of their assessments is clearly a form of personal engagement with students (Higgins, Hartley, & Skelton, 2001). It could be argued that the students’ understanding of the feedback received may provide a catalyst for their subsequent behavior (Pitt & Norton, 2017). Furthermore, studies have shown that verbal feedback is valued, as it enables the students to clarify misunderstandings and gaps in knowledge instead of potentially misinterpreting written feedback.

Screen Capture Feedback as Promising Practice

Providing students with feedback on papers by way of screen capture technology is not new, yet screen capture feedback in higher education should be considered as best practice in promoting learning. The interactive nature of video feedback has been widely reported by students as a more meaningful and engaging method of feedback (Denton, 2014). Feedback is described in the literature as being most meaningful as a two-way communication process (Jones, Georghiades, & Gunson, 2012). This type of two-way dialog is accomplished effortlessly in traditional class discussion between students and professor but is more challenging in feedback on papers, projects, or online/distance courses with no seated interaction.

Feedback also poses a challenge for the educator who has large amounts of papers to review or must provide performance-based feedback, as it relates to clinical or task skills that need to be demonstrated for a course. Feedback is more than a sharing of information; it is the ability to communicate with the student about the fundamentals of academic or professional writing as well as the students’ ability to demonstrate the cognitive and affective domains as described by Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956). Video feedback can also be instrumental in promoting competency skill in professional disciplines and provides verbal direction and correction for clinical skills discussion or demonstration on assignments (Wittler, Hartman, Manthey, Hiestand, & Askew, 2016).

Adding visual feedback with screen capture technology allows for instructors to demonstrate how to make structural changes to papers, reinforce formatting, and word choice that can affect the voice in the paper. Students report an increased understanding of feedback when two or more methods (voice, written, and visual) are used (McCarthy, 2015).

The Process of Video Grading

Students submitted their papers on Blackboard, and the instructor would use the viewer services within the platform to view the papers. Another tool that was used to complete the video recording was Panopto. Once the student’s paper was on the screen, Panopto enabled a video recording of feedback highlighting both positive aspects of the student’s paper as well as areas for improvement, see the process in Figure 1.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Explanation of the video grading process.

When using this type of grading method, it may take faculty more time to read a student’s paper depending on the process, objectives, and length of the assignment. Instructors may take time to first read through the paper and then record the feedback which may add additional time to the grading process. Yet, this may allow faculty to provide more in-depth comments than if they had to type out all of the suggested modifications.

This research seeks to better understand students’ comparisons of written verses video feedback in a large undergraduate course. And more specifically to understand students’ perceptions of this type of grading process in a large enrollment undergraduate course.

Methods

This study was conducted in the Spring 2018 term within a large enrollment course (75+ undergraduate students). Two methods of feedback models were used, written-based and video feedback were used during the semester. Students were assigned a paper made up of three main components. These components were broken down further into smaller sections that were turned in for instructor written feedback. After students received written feedback, they were instructed to make the appropriate changes to the paper and turn in the revised combined draft. Once the components had been combined, the students were given video feedback on in progress paper. Students received written feedback 8 times during the semester and video feedback twice.

Results

The described method was employed during the Spring 2018 semester. Overall, the students felt that the quality, ability to understand information, helpfulness, accessibility, and ease of making changes of video grading were better than written feedback provided in the course (see Table 1). Because of the large class size, it was important to determine if this method of grading had an impact on students’ feelings of being connected to the instructor. A total of 89% of students responded that this mode of grading does help them to feel more connected to the instructor. One student wrote,

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Assessment of Video Grading.

	Better than written	About the same as written	Worse than written	Quotes from students
Quality	75% (43)	25% (14)	0	“Video seems to give a better chance to explain what you want to be fixed, faster to say than write all the comments so tend to include more.”
Ability to understand information	86% (49)	14% (8)	0	“I tend to not fully understand written feedback, and builds a better connection with the video.”
Helpfulness	81% (46)	18% (10)	0	“you’re able to tell more about how one is feeling about the progress of the paper through tone.”
Accessibility	63% (35)	25% (14)	13% (7)	“Paper can be lost, but the video is online and can watch anywhere. Following a voice and seeing live what is being pointed out makes it better to understand.”
Ease of making changes	81% (46)	12% (7)	5% (3)	“It was much easier to understand what exactly you wanted to be fixed. With written feedback, you have to first understand their handwriting and then understand exactly what wrong which is often hard.”

The majority of students also liked seeing the picture of the instructor in the video page, all (46) students who noticed the image did like it. The majority of students (93%) felt that video grading would be beneficial to use in other courses.

Students were asked if there were any aspects of video grading that they liked more than written feedback, this was asked in an open-ended question. Of the 42 students who responded to this question a few major themes were noted. A total of 11 students commented on that the ability to understand the information was greater for video grading, and another 8 noted the clarity of the comments. Eleven students commented on how the video grading help them feel for connected to the instructor compared to traditional written feedback. The second question asked students if there was anything about video feedback help them to better understand the feedback better than written information. Of the 31 students who responded, the majority (13) noted that video feedback was clearer to understand, and it was easier to make changes (8) to their paper as compared to written feedback. Other students (4) noted that the quality was greater for video feedback compared to written feedback.

Discussion

The findings of this study demonstrate that video grading is a useful mode of grading to help students clearly understand, make changes, and feel more connected to the instructor. This is in line with previous studies that show students favor more detailed feedback on their writing (Hyland & Hyland, 2006). Along with demonstrating that this mode of grading can foster a feeling of connection with the instructor, even in a large enrollment undergraduate course.

In courses with large numbers of learners, educators often find themselves struggling with keeping learners’ attention. Video feedback has been shown to aid in student engagement, productivity, learning, and satisfaction in these large course settings (West & Turner, 2016). The use of screen capture software to provide video feedback to learners enhances engagement without the significant cost of providing the infrastructure of a flip classroom.

Cultivating rapport or connection with students in the classroom has been found to be one of the top six attributes of student’s perception of good teaching (Faranda & Clarke, 2004). One study found that a way to build rapport with students is to provide them with clear feedback (Webb & Barrett, 2014). Other study found that providing video feedback in a graduate level course, it helped to create a bond between the student and the instructor (Parton, Crain-Dorough, & Hancock, 2010). These results were consistent with the results found in this study. Providing video feedback on written assignments fits well with social learning and community of pedagogical inquiry models. A common trend in higher education is the move to online learning which can be challenging to connect with learners and create an interactive learning community. Here again, research supports that using video feedback for assignments in online learning communities helps establish a social presence for the instructor (Thomas, West, & Borup, 2017).

Future studies should focus on the use of video grading in online courses to increase connection with instructors in distance learning settings. Furthermore, the trust with the instructor should be explored in future studies to better understand the benefits of trust in large enrollment undergraduate courses.