Three teaching things: week of September 20
In this issue: Considering the conditions for effective student feedback; a toolkit of ten inclusive teaching practices and; a tool designed for real-time transcription with a free tier of service.
Issue #18
Three Teaching Things is a weekly newsletter compiled by Gavan Watson sharing three different teaching and learning resources (papers, resources or tools) worth your attention.
1. The paper
Conditions that enable effective feedback
The logic is pretty compelling: in order for instructor feedback to be effective (useful?) in improving future practice, students need to be able to review it, understand it, and know how to action it (and I hope you see that as one of the functions of feedback, rather than just as a justification for a mark). But is that it? Are there other fundamental conditions that should be in place in order to allow feedback to be successful? This paper (reporting on a 4-stage, 18-month project at two Australian Universities) attempts to answer that question, and in so doing, outlines the twelve conditions the authors propose that enables successful feedback practices.
Figure 1 from the paper: 12 conditions that enable effective feedback (Henderson et al., 2019, p. 1406).
The results and discussion (pp. 1405-1413) is rich with examples that could be adapted to individual teaching practices. Also for academic leaders to consider is a series of findings around institutional culture—and this is where the authors end: “Crucially, we need to develop a culture for effective feedback within the institution” (p. 1414).
Henderson, M., Phillips, M., Ryan, T., Boud, D., Dawson, P., Molloy, E., & Mahoney, P. (2019). Conditions that enable effective feedback. Higher Education Research & Development, 38(7), 1401–1416. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1657807
2. The resource
Inclusive Teaching Practices Toolkit
Developed by the Association of College and University Educators, the Inclusive Teaching Practices Toolkit provides ten practices that can be used to help establish (and maintain) inclusive learning environments. What’s that? As Dr. José Antonio Bowen says in one of the short videos that accompanies each practice, it is every student in your class being able to “see themselves” in the subject at hand. The practices are straight-forward and feasible to adopt, with examples provided for you to download and adapt.
3. The tool
Otter
Offering 600 minutes of transcription per month (with some other important limitations) in the free tier, Otter transcribes live and recorded audio. There are no humans involved: words are recognized and the transcript is created with the help of artificial intelligence. That means that 100% accuracy wont be achieved, and the transcriptions that are created are often missing some punctuation.
The free tier is limited to 3 imports of audio files, in total, forever. This limits the tool’s value for doing transcriptions after-the-fact, and suggests it is really designed to do real-time transcription (e.g. a synchronous class or a meeting). It does offer Zoom integration, but (since I don’t use Zoom) I could see installing the Otter mobile app, and, with the phone in front of me, record the section of the class I wanted transcribed. Kind of clunky, but does save time in doing the transcription myself, after-the-fact.
Thanks for reading!
I love these three things, thank you! I use Otter. Once I've finished editing a video, I play it aloud on my computer, with Otter open and recording in a browser. No need for two devices, although it's still clunky and Otter will pick up background noise this way.