Internationalisation and the use of electronic media in teaching and assessment. Live webinars and audio feedback: apparent benefits and drawbacks

Abstract

The paper explores two examples of electronic media, the webinar (virtual classroom) and audio feedback. It is argued that both can enhance teaching and learning and contribute effectively to an internationalisation agenda. Real-time webinars using Wimba virtual classroom software are especially suited to widely distributed or international cohorts. The live quality of this approach and its capacity for archiving make it especially attractive to all students. There are also particular benefits to non-native speakers (NNS) as they can listen repeatedly. The use of MP3 files and podcasts is a useful enhancement to the virtual learning environment (VLE), but audio feedback on essays is of specific benefit to individual students, providing rich and detailed commentary on their work. Audio files can be extended to all kinds of tutor-student communication, enriching the possibilities for review and dialogue in the provision of formative as well as summative feedback.

The paper concludes that regular application of such technologies can make a vital contribution to institutional competitiveness, improve the learning and teaching experience and meet students’ growing expectations of improved use of ICT. Such initiatives are therefore a key part of the internationalisation agenda.

Keywords:

• webinar
• electronic feedback
• virtual learning environment (VLE)
• live classroom
• non-native speakers (NNS)
• audio feedback
• assessment
• internationalisation

Introduction

This paper reports on two kinds of electronic support, webinars and MP3 audio feedback. Webinars are real-time online seminars, using virtual classroom software from Wimba. These approaches have been applied at both postgraduate and undergraduate level with diverse student groups at York St John University. These ICT-driven methods are especially complementary to flexible distributed learning and distance learning methodologies already applied at York St John in the MA International Studies. However, most of the work reported in this paper involved extending these approaches to undergraduate modules for a conventional home-based programme, as well as using the webinar tools for a cohort of teacher trainees based in Bahrain. It is clear that both the live classroom and the electronic feedback suit a range of teaching and learning contexts, and dispersed cohorts of international as well as home students. More details concerning the groups with whom these approaches were used are given below.

Increasing use of ICT clearly has an important role in enabling learners to take responsibility for their learning, promoting learning throughout life and the personalisation of learning, and establishing clearer synergies between learners’ use of ICT in private lives and in their studies (JISC, 2009a). Various studies indicate the centrality of ICT to students’ lives, and their increased expectation that their educational experience should reflect this in richly diverse ways and that the technology should be ‘robust, reliable and accessible’ (JISC, 2009b). What is perhaps less commented on is that ICT can also make a significant contribution to the internationalisation agenda in higher education (HE). Internationalisation implies not only an openness to recruiting students to home-based courses, an essential dimension of HE activity in a globally competitive environment, but also the increased use of collaborative partnerships, off-site provision, virtual delivery and traditional as well as ICT-enhanced distance learning and flexible distribution. The European Commission states that ICT is ‘fostering the growth of internationalisation in higher education’ and highlights ’networking capabilities and the opportunities for shared courses and learning services … pointing the way towards virtual mobility’ (European Commission, 2008). An earlier report from the OECD, however, indicated that a low level of staff expertise in applying new technologies has meant a relatively slow rate of introduction, and also that e-learning can boost the quality of provision and bring better support to teaching and learning (OECD, 2005).

The relevance of enhanced e-learning to an internationalisation agenda is highlighted by the QAA code of practice which makes reference to flexible and distributed learning in the context of collaborative provision, for example through international institutional partnerships (www.qaa.ac.uk). Technology has facilitated new forms of materials distribution for distance provision and is now leading to the mainstreaming of ‘blended learning’ approaches for perhaps the majority of campus-based students (Hayward, 2007).

This paper argues that enhanced e-support, especially with respect to assessment and feedback, should be an integral part of the teaching and learning process, and can bring substantial benefits to teaching and learning in a variety of blended learning contexts. It will also assist in meeting institutional agendas such as enhanced internationalisation, widening participation and extending market competitiveness.

Several projects funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) investigating the use of e-learning refer to ICT as a daily dimension of the lives of most students, contributing to their identities in myriad ways (JISC, 2005, 2009a,b). Nevertheless, JISC also cautions against assuming that all students are equally comfortable with ICT and says that there are differences in experience and expectations within student cohorts and within international student cohorts. JISC also points out the importance of ICT being accessible to learners with access problems that may hinder their use of teaching and learning media, and stress the potential for ICT-driven media to be of special benefit to such learners (JISC, 2005, 2009a,b).

Technology also offers advantages in terms of access for other non-traditional students as well as international ones, namely carers, the employed, full or part time, or others for whom flexible provision and non-conventional approaches to timetabling are essential. E-support is not as time restricted since every aspect of the teaching and learning process can be recorded and archived for access at any time, 24/7 from anywhere. In this respect, it is not only an internationalisation agenda that benefits from technology, but also efforts to be inclusive and supportive of a wide range of potential or actual students. Lifelong learning has broadened horizons and ICT improves accessibility for all.

A specific benefit in terms of the technologies examined in this paper is the linking that can be achieved across teaching, learning and assessment, a principle highlighted by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) as important in future directions and policy implementation in relation to ICT (HEFCE, 2009). The report highlights benefits in all these areas and the corresponding contribution to ‘improved satisfaction, retention and achievement’. In both examples reported here, assessment is key to successful application.

Finally, both the webinar/live classroom and the use of audio feedback bring specific benefits to international students whose first language is not English (non-native speakers — NSS). Warwick (2008) used action research to highlight many poorly addressed problems facing international students, not least the lack of language support and — surprising to some — the lack of opportunity to actually use English. He correctly points out that a high International English Language Testing System (IELTS) score is a poor indicator of student performance. He also questions the credibility for international students of the one-year master’s degree, feeling that many students are ill-prepared for the challenge implicit in such programmes.

NNS students may also face the problem of tutors who assume they (the students) understand their English because ‘they understand English (and/or) they have a high IELTS score’. This may be far from true. Increased use of ICT, however, can be extremely beneficial to NNS students, not least owing to the opportunity to listen repeatedly to recorded material posted onto the VLE.

Burnapp and Dickens (2008) also question the value of IELTS as a predictor of student competence in English and cite a range of studies pointing to the specific needs of international students whose level of English may seem good on paper, but where a range of other intercultural issues may engender other difficulties, such as what is expected of students in the UK university environment (Cortazzi and Jin (1996), Ballard (1996), Howard (1995). Burnapp and Dickens (2008) highlight the need for reflective practice and action research to better understand and respond to the concerns around the international student experience.

Bourn (2008) also highlights the international citizenship dimension to a university education and comments that all students, both home and international, require this perspective. Higher education institutions (HEIs) should focus on the need to promote dialogue, to engage with international students much more directly, and to assist their integration. Again, ICT, and the live classroom in particular, can help increase NNS participation and hence inclusiveness among student cohorts.

1 Live classroom (webinars)

Using Wimba software (www.wimba.com), the live classroom facility enables a webinar to be conducted in real time. This online virtual seminar represents a significant advance on the conventional use of the Blackboard VLE. The benefits are numerous, especially for widely dispersed cohorts, as with distance-learning degrees or flexible, variously distributed learning. At York St John a high percentage of students fit part-time work around their studies, and this too may mean that webinars can offer distinct advantages to many. Such means of delivery may also be helpful in advancing internationalisation given that, in theory, students could be anywhere in the world, perhaps members of widely dispersed but geographically specific cohorts established through international partnerships. For example, while all students may live in the Tokyo Bay area, a live webinar could be a much easier proposition than travelling to a central point for a conventional seminar.

Early experiments with the webinar at York St John occurred within the framework of a two-year C4C CETL-funded project, Enabling e-Learning (EEL), for which the author of this paper was project leader. The webinar, using virtual classroom software, was the centrepiece of the EEL project and was used eight times over five modules. The main instances involved two undergraduate modules from BA (Hons) Business Management, ‘The business of international trade and globalisation’ (level 5) and ‘Business environments in the Single European Market’ (level 6). York St John had a limited access licence agreement with Wimba, meaning that no more than 25 students could log on to the virtual classroom at any one time. This proved sufficient as not all the students registered for the modules tried to participate in the webinars: 23 for the first webinar and between 15 and 20 for the subsequent three occasions.

The webinar was also used for inter-institutional meetings between colleagues in York and the Netherlands in discussions about a future institutional partnership. Those involved reported positively on the technology.

The webinar works in the following way. Students registered for the module are sent a link via email, which is simultaneously posted on the VLE site for the module concerned, inviting them to join the webinar (virtual seminar) at a specified time from any networked computer. As soon as they click on the link, they gain access and receive a welcome message. The tutor can see who has signed in, as can the participants. The virtual classroom can utilise a number of instruments, including a webcam, microphone, headphones and loudspeakers, with a laptop or PC. All students are offered a headset, but even without these they can take part because messages can be exchanged using the computer keyboard with text displayed on screen and participants can hear the tutor’s voice if their PC or laptop is equipped with speakers.

The tutor welcomes the participants and begins the session with some simple instructions or questions — students can click on-screen symbols to indicate ’yes/no’ or ‘happy/not happy’, to vote, for example, on whether they approve or disapprove of a suggested answer to a question. Other documents can be uploaded to the virtual classroom and introduced as required. These may be Word or Excel files, PowerPoint slides, MP3 files, JPEGs, or any file from the tutor’s computer including files or images extracted from the web.

By clicking an on-screen button and holding down ‘control’, students can speak and be heard by all participants if invited to do so by the tutor. All students can use their keyboard to type questions or offer answers. Perhaps the most useful facility in the live classroom is the archiving tool, which means the entire session can be revisited repeatedly.

In the sessions reported here, students were advised that the webinars would be dedicated to discussing forthcoming assessments for the module. This proved popular and ensured a high level of participation. The approach was to upload Word documents that bore some relationship to the subject matter of the various module assessments (essays, journal article reviews, and a test). The documents consisted of a series of questions which triggered discussion of possible answers with the students and responses to students’ supplementary questions. The tutor controlled the start and end of the archiving tool, so the entire session recorded was stored for future reference on the VLE, accessible to all, including any students unable to participate in the live session.

It should be noted that since students knew that the entire webinar would be uploaded to the VLE, and since the sessions took place outside the scheduled seminar time for some students, participation was not 100 per cent. Also, it was not possible to monitor which students visited the archive, but most reported that they had done so.

Feedback from these groups was extremely positive. From a total of around 30 instances of feedback, gathered either directly at the end of the session via an electronically submitted survey conducted by the university e-learning advisor, or by email, all but two were unreservedly positive. The two exceptions had experienced connectivity problems. All students who visited the archived webinar found it ‘helpful’ or ‘extremely helpful’. Some students commented that this was a genuine supported open learning technology that made sense of the promise to provide an e-supported module, and most students expressed the wish that the tool be extended to other modules, especially in relation to assessment.

Typical student comments on the sessions were: ‘great fun’; ‘interesting’; ‘really useful for the assessment’; ‘great way to build supported open learning’; ‘really enjoyed it’; ‘wish more tutors would use this’; ‘brilliant’; ‘the archiving was great to check I had understood’.

The webinar technology was used by three other staff members on four different occasions. Two involved a cohort of 15 international students at the University of Bahrain, studying through an institutional partnership for a postgraduate certificate in academic practice (PCAP). Diana Wetherell Terry reported: ‘We used the Wimba virtual classroom from our desks in York with teacher trainees in Bahrain. The time difference was not a problem, and webinar sessions were managed around religious needs.’ Diana also pointed out the carbon neutral properties of such sessions. She further commented: ‘The virtual classroom enables international participants to feel part of the university community and it maximises efficiency in the creative use of technologies for the benefit of PCAP participants in Bahrain.’

A further webinar attempt involved MA International Studies students on the first module of this blended learning programme, ‘Introduction to the study of contemporary societies and culture’. This was especially significant because the cohort is widely dispersed, one in Japan, three in different parts of the UK and one in Belgium. The results were more mixed, as accessibility, which the technology is supposed to help, proved to be the stumbling block. The students all had very different timetables, work commitments, and indeed lived in three different time zones. The module tutor, Beverly Geesin, commented:

‘Fixing a time for the webinar proved very difficult, and when this problem seemed to have been overcome, the colleague in Tokyo experienced connectivity problems so the session did not work for him. The same happened for another student trying to connect from her home in York. In fact, generally we had technical issues throughout, so it didn’t work so well.’

A key observation from all the above was that linking the webinar to assessment, particularly for the undergraduate students, seemed a useful and effective way to engage students in what was — for them — an entirely new initiative. One student who took part in both in two different semesters commented that the first time had been ‘more useful’, but she reported that this was because she had more ’issues’ with the assessment for that module, whereas she felt happier with the second module assessment from the outset, so effectively the webinar proved enjoyable but less instructive. It is clear that for the great majority the experience was enjoyable and fun — and feedback often included those words.

The students almost unanimously enjoyed the webinars and evidently played around during the sessions as well as asked lots of pertinent questions. This demonstrated that the virtual class was more enjoyable and more interactive than many conventional seminars, where some students rarely contribute and others appear to dominate. For international cohorts, the extent of participation and active engagement appeared to be considerably greater than with much more limited Blackboard facilities such as discussion boards.

A further observation was that the webinar compared favourably with previous attempts to use videoconferencing with dispersed cohorts in Japan and Taiwan. Videoconferencing worked but was more technologically challenging and less flexible, less interactive and less engaging. Usually, the picture quality was so poor that it detracted from the message of the presentation. A key advantage of the webinar is that it lends itself to interaction and dialogue. It offers a decisive technological advantage for teaching students in dispersed locations, something which is much more difficult with videoconferencing.

In sum, the experience with the live classroom was extremely positive and well received by students. It provides a valuable extra dimension to teaching. It appears to be an excellent way to consolidate advice and learning, especially when tied to assessment activities. The technology is also well suited to working with widely dispersed cohorts or off-site delivery. Feedback has been positive, especially where combined with other forms of e-support. As a follow-up to onsite visits, the virtual classroom has a significant role in consolidating the tutor—student relationship and building a full sense of inclusion for international students living abroad. The experiments we have conducted demonstrate that this form of e-support can play a significant and positive role in promoting internationalisation.

Possible problems with or downsides to webinars include:

• Some students need to be coaxed to take part in using a new and unfamiliar approach, but there was a sense that students’ positive remarks would draw others into taking part in future.

• Institutional support is required to purchase the software licence.

• Inevitably, there is a learning curve to build familiarity with the approach, but support from the providers is very good and repeated use will help to make the instrument routine and straightforward.

• There may be reluctance from some colleagues to engage with the new technology.

• Some students may be reluctant to take part, but arguably they might be unlikely to contribute to conventional seminars as well. Experience from the webinars reported here indicates a higher than usual level of active participation from a larger number of students.

• For distance learning with dispersed groups the webinar offers clear advantages, but if students are in very different time zones this can be difficult to organise.

2 Audio feedback using MP3 files

Experimentation with audio feedback at York St John University was also within the framework of the EEL project. The work also benefited from involvement with the JISC-sponsored Sounds Good project (http://sites.google.com/site/soundsgooduk/Home) led by Bob Rotheram at Leeds Metropolitan University. Other partners included Newman University College, Birmingham, and Northampton University.

The Sounds Good project set out to test the potential advantages of audio feedback over traditional written feedback. Results have been extremely positive. Audio feedback appears to offer rich and more detailed comment on assignments for the benefit of learners, although it is probably not time-saving for tutors (see report at www.yorksj.ac.uk/learnteach/eel/documents.html).

Audio feedback requires a good quality handheld audio recorder. It does not have to be an Edirol R-09HR, a very high quality recording instrument suitable for BBC radio journalists, as cheaper options are available. The device is easy to use but it is important to choose the right format (MP3, not wav) and an appropriate quality setting (64kb/sec). Higher quality merely increases file size and picks up more extraneous noise. File naming on the device itself is not straightforward, so it is better to do this on the computer after downloading the audio files.

The most important technical problem is how to distribute the audio files to students. The novice may fail to set up electronic delivery of assignments inside the VLE at the outset. This is a mistake because uploading audio files one by one to Blackboard is a laborious process, while adding an audio file to an electronic submission is straightforward and the file can be easily accessed by the correct student. Any other form of sending out an audio file, such as email, is not recommended as the file sizes are too big and many students are increasingly email averse or treat email as part of their private domain — perhaps for communicating with family members. Students’ university email accounts are often dormant and/or filled to capacity with unread messages and junk.

So, what about the experience of audio feedback? As with any technology, there is a necessary learning curve. It is easy to make mistakes or make the wrong choices. The above paragraph therefore contains several cautions. A tutor will probably find that it takes a while to get accustomed to the approach and that the best talking style is a natural conversational tone, complete with hesitations, false starts, repetition and all the redundancy of normal speech. Try to ensure that the recording sounds friendly and not overly formal; preparation or scripting is certainly not required. Students appreciate a personal tone, especially if the feedback is less than fulsome. Criticism will be more readily accepted if it is clearly personal and supportive.

The best way to record is probably to read the assignment once, then deliver feedback of a general nature while looking through the assignment a second time, commenting and advising on specific points on specific pages. It is helpful to invite the student to have a copy of the assignment to look at while listening to the feedback. Typically, each assignment might demand four or five minutes of spoken feedback — a file size of around 5 or 6mb. It is helpful to refer to the student by name at the start and end of each recording, to assist with identification and file labelling. Naturally, anonymous feedback does not fit well with audio feedback, since a personal style is a key benefit. A further tip is to find a quiet environment where you are not likely to be disturbed during recording.

An advantage of audio feedback is that it is probably more likely to be picked up than traditionally written comments on a student essay passed to the faculty office for collection. Furthermore, the conventional hard copy with handwritten comments often suffers from legibility problems, particularly for non-native speakers of English (NNS). More important, weaker students tend to be the least likely to actually collect their marked assignments. This is doubly unfortunate in that weaker assignments tend to warrant (and get) more feedback. If a conventionally submitted assignment marked in the traditional way is not collected then considerable tutor time is wasted, and the very students who most need the feedback do not get it. Audio feedback potentially resolves all these problems.

Tutors at York St John (and also at Leeds Met) report that audio feedback does not save time over conventional typed feedback but that it is definitely more extensive and could eventually prove timesaving. A slight downside at present is the relative novelty of the approach and the resulting variability in level of service to students. Some students may feel privileged to receive audio feedback or be extremely happy with it and want more, while others don’t get any because many tutors are not (yet) familiar with the technology or may be reluctant to embrace it. There may also be other practical issues around moderation and review by external examiners, but these are minor issues, easily resolved.

At York St John University, audio feedback was used with a number of student groups. Five were third-year research investigation assignments from the BA Business Management, including two NNS international students. Five were MA International Studies students in diverse locations including Belgium, Japan and the UK. The largest cohort applications of audio feedback were with a third-year ‘European business environments’ module (30 students) and a second-year ’Business of international trade and globalisation’ module (30 students) — both from BA Business Management. Around 40 students provided their views on receiving audio files as feedback, and almost all (38) were extremely positive. Comments included: ‘easy to access’; ‘very detailed’; ‘more personal — clear that the tutor is actually reading the work’; ‘easy to listen a second time’; ‘it’s good because you know the lecturer hasn’t just copied and pasted the same comments on to everyone’s work. It’s more individual’; ‘often when you read feedback, things can get misunderstood or meant in a different way. I felt this way was very clear.’

Tutor comments included: ‘once the habit is established it’s easier and quicker’; ’students are more likely to receive the feedback this way’; ‘it takes a bit of time to get used to the organisation of audio files but it’s actually not difficult’; ‘it’s the only way I use now. I wouldn’t want to go back to typing out feedback.’

It is significant that audio feedback arguably helps students with particular needs — for example, dyslexia — and can be especially useful to international students, in particular non-native speakers of English. It is good, for example, that feedback can be listened to repeatedly, with students able to ask for help or advice if anything is not clear. Two international students specifically commented that audio feedback was easier to understand. It is clearly true that audio files offer advantages in this respect, and also that NNS students can ask friends for help if there is something they do not comprehend. In general terms, richer and longer audio feedback will often provide a more comprehensive set of comments and recommendations than written feedback. Bob Rotheram, leader of the Sounds Good project at Leeds Metropolitan University, reporting on extensive trials of audio feedback, stated: ‘Some 90 per cent of the students said they preferred audio to written feedback. They can tell whether the lecturer is serious or not and whether they care. Feedback has been richer and more detailed.’

A final observation is that three external examiners supplied with audio feedback on a CD commented positively on this approach as an excellent benefit for learners, supporting the general view that the feedback provided in this way was more detailed and more comprehensive.

Possible drawbacks/pitfalls of the approach include:

• failure to set up equipment adequately (64kb/sec, MP3)

• importance of establishing assignment submission via electronic drop box inside the VLE

• avoiding emailing MP3 files

• ensuring accurate naming files (refer to student by name at beginning and end of recording)

• limiting recording to around five minutes per student

• need to print off assignments from the VLE if in the habit of reading hard copy of assignments, which is time-consuming and expensive

• need for hard copies of assignments for internal moderator and external examiner

• no way of being completely sure that students have accessed feedback

• significant learning curve to using audio feedback (requires organisation and patience)

• probably not a timesaving instrument.

Conclusion

This report has made a number of claims:

• Internationalisation can benefit from a range of e-learning instruments.

• The webinar in a VLE context, such as that facilitated by Wimba software, is an excellent interactive learning and teaching tool that seems to enjoy high student approval ratings.

• The webinar is especially suited to guidance on assignments, or in driving discussions.

• A key benefit of the webinar is that the entire session can be archived on the VLE for future and repeated access.

• Audio feedback offers significant benefits in terms of accessibility, detail and quality of feedback, as well as a personal touch.

• Reports from both tutors and students suggest a high level of acceptance and satisfaction. However, there is a significant learning curve involved in establishing familiarity with providing audio feedback.

• All aspects of enhanced ICT and e-feedback offer particular benefits to flexible distributed learning appropriate to courses with students in diverse locations, notably abroad.

• The internationalisation agenda is helped by the application of distance and blended learning methodologies, and the webinar and audio feedback seem highly appropriate.

• E-support such as the webinar and audio feedback may offer particular advantages to non-native speakers of English or students with other specific needs.

Universities will continue to exploit new technologies which enhance teaching and learning. Not only will this benefit the competitiveness of UK HEIs, but it is clearly important to meet the growing expectations of learners that their universities will fully exploit product innovation in this field. A recent Becta report (2008) warns that the use of new technologies is too often regarded as an optional extra, and practitioners rarely exploit the full benefits available. A JISC (2007) study notes that students have high expectations of what should be routinely available in their study environment. It is also certain that international partnerships are increasingly dependent on the full use of available technologies. Institutions seeking to further develop new international partnerships would be wise to pay attention to emerging technologies that can add value to the student experience.

International students, often paying substantial fees, will expect the highest levels of ICT implementation. Internationalisation will increasingly involve distributed and flexible learning, institutional partnerships and widely dispersed cohorts. In all of these contexts new technologies are not merely optional. The 2008 Becta report further emphasises that a shift towards more personalised learning is a fundamental government priority. This personalisation is probably even more important for off-campus and widely dispersed students. Real-time, live classroom e-seminars, subsequently uploaded to the VLE, and audio feedback using MP3 files (or similar) should be an important part of enhancing teaching and learning and the services that the university delivers to all students, both home and international.

Biography

Simon Sweeney is head of programme for the MA International Studies at York St John University. He won a national teaching fellowship from the Higher Education Authority in 2006. He has served for three years as a UK Erasmus Bologna expert and has been reappointed for a further two years. He is the author of Europe, the state and globalisation (Longman, 2005). He is doing a PhD on the evolution of European Security and Defence Policy and its relationship to the wider European integration process.

Notes

An earlier version of this report was presented at the C-SAP conference The virtual university: social science critiques of learning and teaching in the age of digital reproduction, 16 January 2009. London.

This work has benefited from C4C CETL funding through the Enabling e-Learning (EEL) project at York St John University. The author would like to acknowledge the support of Mark Dransfield, e-learning advisor at York St John University and EEL team member. More information is available at: www.yorksj.ac.uk/learnteach/eel/index.html.

The author acknowledges the support of the JISC-funded Sounds Good project, led by Bob Rotheram at Leeds Metropolitan University.