Exploring Speech Styles in Audio Feedback for Distance Education

1. School of Education and the Beyond Distance Research Alliance An exploratory study of speech styles in audio feedbackDiane Davies, Pamela Rogerson-Revell and Gabi Witthaus ALT Learning Technologist of the Year: Team Award 2009 European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning: UNIQUe Award Winner

2. DUCKLING project context • Delivering University Curricula: Knowledge, Learning & Innovation Gains • Started in Jan 2009 • Funded by JISC for two years • Three DL programmes in Social Sciences www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/duckling

3. Challenges for DUCKLING • Students felt distant and isolated – did not feel connected to tutors or peers • Time-poor students, time-poor staff • Students wanted a greater variety of approaches to curriculum delivery

4. DUCKLING technologies Podcasting E-book readers Second Life

5. About the podcasts we’re using • Produced by two tutors for individual tutees (i.e. a case study with a small sample) • Commenting on draft dissertation work • Not the only form of feedback used, i.e. tutors also gave written feedback and annotated the drafts using the ‘insert comment’ function in Word

6. Language variation and academic discourse • Domain of discourse: activity involved (e.g. meeting; research paper) • Tenor of discourse: relationship between speaker and addressee (tutor and student; tutor and colleague) • Mode of discourse: effects of the medium of communication (face-to-face conversation; email etc)

7. Effects of mode: ‘typical’ speech • Inexplicitness and vagueness (‘and all that’, ‘sort of’) • Looser clause structure (coordinated clauses with ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘or’) • Normal disfluency (‘er’, ‘erm’, false starts and reformulations)’ • Features reflecting informality (contracted forms; non-technical, accessible vocabulary)

8. ‘Typical’ writing • Explicit (e.g. legalistic discourse) • Clear sentence boundaries • More complex clause structure (greater use of subordination) • Fluency • Features reflecting formality (nominalisation; avoidance of idiomatic language or slang)

9. Audio feedback as discourse • Domain: feedback on draft dissertations, i.e. major part of the course • Tenor: tutor needs to relate to the student as both ‘expert judge’ and ‘supportive guide’ • Mode: tutor speaks from notes but doesn’t follow a script ; may or may not edit the recording

10. Our focus What linguistic choices (grammatical, phonological etc) are made in audio and written feedback with regard to: • giving support and reducing social distance • giving negative feedback • giving positive feedback/praise

11. Example 1:Support in opening phase Tutor B Student 6 Introduction so what I try to do/ in these –podcasts/ – is to add some/ explanation to the comments\ -to bring them to life/ - if you like really/ -- to add emphasis/ and tone \-so- if you have made/ a horrendous error/ -which I’m sure you haven’t \- then I can point you in that direction\

12. Example 2: Positive feedback • Tutor A to Student 2 …this is a 'great 'draft ' research re'port..erm./.it’s 'obviously had..erm.. a 'great deal of work on it/ and you’ve got a fan'tastic a'mount of 'relevant 'research and 'theory /.so the actual content that you’ve got/ is all 'very good..m./.I love the way you 'justified your hy'potheses /in..in terms of theo'retical and 'practical impli'cations /so 'all of that is' really good /…the aim of this feedback /is just to help you use all the 'content and hard work that’s gone into your draft 'research re'port/ to 'strengthen the 'arguments that you’ve made/ and the justifi'cations and the 'impact of your a'nalysis…

13. Example 3: Negative feedback Tutor A to Student 2 In terms of the introduction/ -- the main comment/ - is around/ the order in which you present all the information/ - within your introduction\ -- and -- how and where/- you define your terms and concepts\ --and you’ll see from the comments in there/-- I think you need to take a step back and almost mapout/ -- the flow of the story/ that you’re trying to tell in the introduction\ - and think about/ –which bits/ need to come before other bits/ so that when you discuss those latter bits/- they make more sense/ - because you’ve already covered/ --the other concepts/ - terms/ - theories etc that are relevant to that bit\

14. Example 4: Negative feedback Tutor A Student 1   some of the specific comments I’ve got/ -- in the introduction\ - are around the way you talk about the theories of job satisfaction\ -and the measures leading up to justifying your research questions\ - and I think in these sections/ - that you could be a little bit more critical/ – about --the different theories that you review/ - in light of the contexts/ that you want to use them for\ - so at the moment/ -- the sections on/ - the –theories of - job satisfaction/- and - the measures that are used/ for job satisfaction\ are quite descriptive\ --and I think what you need to do/ - is to- talk about them/ and evaluate them\ – in ‘respect to the context/ that you are using them in\

15. Example 5: Tutor sharing experience Tutor B to Student 6 ..the other con'cern I had in this 'section/ was 'why you’d split age 'and 'tenure into cate'gorical groups/ …'that doesn’t seem to make 'logical sense to me / because it ..it.'.wastes 'variance/ …there’s 'variance with'in a con'tinuous 'variable/ like the raw 'data on age / that is 'lost if you 'split it into 'two groups /..so..for ex'ample 'everybody who’s over 'forty / gets 'treated the 'same re'gardless of whether they’re forty-'one or fifty-nine/ …so there’s a com'pression of 'variance there/ …now I’ve come up against this 'issue / in a 'paper that I wrote for a 'research 'journal a couple of years ago/ …and it’s fairly easily solved really/ …'all you need to do / is change the 'ANOVA to an 'ANCOVA / and in'clude age as a co-'variate/ …so it still 'tests the hy'pothesis that you’re 'interested in/ but it just does it in a 'slightly 'different way/ that re'tains the 'variance…

16. Some findings • Mix of written and spoken feedback is ‘best of both worlds’ • Maintains detail and integrity of academic content (not just an informal ‘chat’) • Adds clarification, exemplification, • Enables personalisation • Enables nuance through tone etc – e.g. gives negative criticism supportively; gives positive feedback more emphatically

17. Summary • Tutors in our sample strike a balance between their role as ‘expert’ and ‘guide’. • Students gain through the interconnected modes of audio and written feedback • Empowering for students as the distance between tutor and student is reduced • Particularly valuable for dissertation work

18. Beyond Distance Research Alliance Learning Futures Festival Online 2010 Positively Disruptive 7-14 January 2010 www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/festival KEYNOTE SPEAKERS Dr Stephen Bax, Professor Phil Candy, Aly Conteh, Dr Chris Davies, Stephen Downes, Professor Ian Jamieson, Professor Josie Taylor, Tessa Welch Festival registration: £75 / closing date: 23 December 2009 European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning: UNIQUe Award Winner ALT Learning Technologist of the Year: Team Award 2009