More Personal, Less Practical? Staff and Student Perspectives on Video Feedback

The annual conference for the Association of Learning Technologists (ALT) took place in Glasgow on the 23rd and 24th October. Myself and several colleagues from the Educational Design and Engagement section were presenting and we also attended a number of sessions on various topics, GenAI seemed to be the “ghost at the feast” in most of these. (See Stuart Nicol’s blog post for an overview of some of some of those GenAI sessions.)

The conference had four themes one of which was “Digital by Design: People, Empathy and Experience” and the session I attended under this banner was titled: More Personal, Less Practical? Staff and Student Perspectives on Video Feedback.

Video feedback potentially promises a more human touch than just written comments but does it actually help students learn, and does it work for staff at scale? These and other questions were discussed in the presentation given by Dr Julian Hopkins, outlining a study he carried out with colleagues, William Farquharson, Dr Isaac Hoff, and Dr Paul Reilly at the University of Glasgow.

The study focussed on a postgraduate social sciences course with 361 students and 62 supervisors, using Moodle and Kaltura Express to deliver feedback on video-based poster presentations. The students and staff were then asked to complete anonymous surveys about their experiences where approximately 12% of students and 60% of supervisors responded.

Generally, students were positive about video feedback. In particular they felt it was more personalised, they found it helpful for understanding how to improve their work and that it provided clear explanations for their mark. What they didn’t like was the inability to search and skim content, and some also experienced technical and access issues when viewing on certain devices. Overall, their preference was for a mix of video and written feedback.

For supervisors personalisation was also a positive, however they did not find video easier for explaining areas that needed improvement. Interestingly for them it was not faster than creating written feedback, the reason being that many wrote detailed notes first, then recorded, therefore it took much longer than giving just written feedback. They also commented that they felt they lost some of the precision the written word gives, there were also a few technical issues around the processes that frustrated them. Understandably there were also privacy and environmental concerns, this was manifested by a reluctance to appear on camera combined with fears about recordings being shared. A number also felt they had unsuitable spaces or backgrounds for recording the feedback.

To add some further context, the supervisors in this study were not given the option to participate, they were advised that all feedback had to be supplied through video. This may account for some of the results, particularly in regards to the level of comfort of those using it.

To summarise the presentation findings; although students perceived video feedback as personal and helpful and supervisors recognised its potential, they both still preferred written feedback for speed, precision, and accessibility. A blended approach was suggested as perhaps the most promising compromise: using video when you want to humanise feedback, model how to read a poster or paper, and communicate tone. Anchored with short, scannable written notes to support precision, accessibility, and easy revisiting.