3. eLearning - paperless courses: Getting feedback to students.

I have already touched upon this in a number of earlier posts - see "2. eLearning - paperless courses: The problem with electronic marking - is PDF the answer?"; "Using an iPad (or equivalent) for marking and/or feedback?"; and "Handy hint: Dictation and feedback", but I think it is worth repeating here.

In the previous post, "2. eLearning - paperless courses: The problem with electronic marking - is PDF the answer?", I looked at how to provide feedback to students electronically using annotated PDFs. In another post, Handy hint: Dictation and feedback, I discussed the use of dictation software in providing feedback. The question is, how to bring them together?

At present, I have not managed that. In fact, I have 2 distinct workflows.

Workflow 1

In workflow 1 I am still dealing with paper copies of student work. This process is basically as I described in a previous post, Handy hint: Dictation and feedback. That is, I read and annotate the text with a pen, and as I'm reading the text I dictate additional feedfback using DragonDictate into Bento, which is running on my computer.

In workflow 1 there is no electronic version of the student work, but I am able to provide for extensive feedback through the use of dictation. (I also recently used this approach for marking exams after a colleague complained they couldn't read my comments!)

Workflow 2

In workflow 2 the student text is provided as a PDF which I have uploaded to dropbox, and then downloaded to GoodReader. This is essentially the process as described in "2. eLearning - paperless courses: The problem with electronic marking - is PDF the answer?". In this workflow I then annotate the PDF using GoodReader.

This all works very well, and I could replace the paper in workflow 1 with the iPad and GoodReader from workflow 2. However, I have yet to find a way to easily and successfully bring the dictated feedback (i.e. the feedback you would put at the end of an essay or piece of work) the annotated PDF together for sending to the student with out having to do a lot of extra work.

The best I've come up with to date is to send the summary and the annotated PDF from GoodReader to my desktop machine and then copying the text and the file over to an e-mail containing the dictated feedback, and then e-mail it to the student. The problem with this approach is is prone to error and is just too much like hard-work, particularly for large classes.

A solution?

At present I haven't got a solution to this problem. If you have any ideas how I can solve this problem then why not leave a comment below?

Image: wikimedia

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