Making non-textual formative feedback useful

Non-textual feedback plays an important role in formative assessment. In art and design education, there is an established tradition of using tutor or peer 'critiques'. Participants use sketches, annotations and verbal comments, to record feedback. Subsequently, through a process of reflection and iteration, students have opportunities to revise and improve their work. NSS data (HEFCE, 2014) indicates that feedback is the area that least satisfies students. Formative non-textual feedback frequently takes place in informal contexts and may not always be recognised by students. Capturing this feedback and subsequently making it available to students may facilitate recognition. Current technologies have the potential to do this but there has been limited use in an academic context to date. This project aimed to investigate sustainable strategies for capturing non-textual feedback minimising workload for the staff involved. The acceptability of different feedback capture methods, desired distribution methods and the availability of devices and technology were investigated with staff and students. Preliminary development activities centred on students' capture, storage and reflection on feedback. However, it was recognised that staff control of captured and stored feedback in a recognised university system was preferable. These investigations identified that capture methods used must be widely available tolerated by participants; unobtrusive; have ability to store formative feedback locally; be able to distribute feedback to other digital systems; have ability to integrate feedback with student work and have the capacity for digital note taking, voice recording and image capture. As modern smartphones and tablets allow the integration of these features, a mobile application was developed. This application allowed feedback to be distributed using a number of methods and stored to facilitate reflection. During trials, the university email system was the most frequently chosen method of distribution. Preliminary testing in a classroom situation indicates that the application has potential and further development into a more extensive and integrated system is being undertaken.