Do students appreciate us?

Last week, I spent an entire morning converting the audio recordings I had made of my students’ presentations (using Audacity, a laptop and an external microphone) into mp3 files, and sending the podcast files, with individual typed feedback, to each student. I hope that they will find it illuminating to hear themselves (this was, for most of them, their first oral presentation), and to think about how they could do things differently next time. The editing, exporting, writing comments and emailing wasn’t terribly difficult, but it took time – and time is something I’m a bit short of…

Peer assessment

I did my first peer assessment experiment this semester. I’d heard one of my colleagues in the English department enthusing about how marvellous peer assessment is for helping students to learn: she says the key thing is the experience of marking someone else’s work (not, for instance, the feedback you actually receive). So I thought I’d try it…