Enabling feedback seeking, agency and uptake through dialogic screencast feedback

Abstract

Screencast feedback is higher in quantity, explicit and engaging and may better enable uptake compared to written feedback. However, most studies deploy screencast feedback as ‘transmission’ of feedback comments, positioning learners as passive and neglecting the importance of agency and action within the uptake process. This study attempts to overcome this limitation by conceptually positioning and deploying screencast feedback in a way that supports agency by providing technology-mediated opportunities for learners to request feedback and initiate uptake-oriented dialogues with providers. Taking a qualitative case approach, using written data, reflections (N = 14) and surveys (N = 14) to progressively focus interviews with 13 undergraduate advanced writing students in South Korea, three themes were developed. First, screencasts appeared to enhance understanding of feedback, helping learners understand standards and to set and achieve goals. Second, through initial feedback requests and opportunities to seek and clarify feedback, responding to feedback dialogically enabled learners to better understand and enact it, supporting their agency. Finally, the perception that the feedback was supportive and caring encouraged trust and motivation to engage with and use feedback. The findings have several theoretical and practical implications and are especially relevant to higher education practitioners wishing to support agency and uptake with a relational approach.

Keywords:

• Agency
• dialogic feedback
• feedback uptake
• relational pedagogy
• socio-constructivism

Acknowledgements

This paper is adapted from my doctoral thesis with institutional ethical approval number (UCL-IOE: Z6364106/2017/12/62), local permissions and the informed consent of the participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

James Wood is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Education at Seoul National University. His research explores how learner engagement, agency and learning from feedback can be supported through socio-constructivist and socio-cultural perspectives augmented by socio-material understandings of how technology can be deployed in workload sustainable and relational ways.