Impact of Audio Feedback Technology on Writing Instruction

• Main Author: Bless, Martha Marie
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: ScholarWorks 2017
• Subjects: Audio Feedback; Feedback; High School; Secondary Education; Teacher Self-Efficacy; Writing Instruction; Elementary and Middle and Secondary Education Administration; Instructional Media Design; Liberal Studies; Secondary Education and Teaching
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/3282; https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4385&context=dissertations

High school writing teacher self-efficacy has suffered because the workload and emotional energy of grading papers is arduous, and despite their efforts to provide formative written feedback, many teachers believe students ignore or misunderstand it. Although audio feedback holds promise for improving the clarity of instructor feedback and the self-efficacy of writing instructors in higher education, its usefulness for improving high school teacher self-efficacy has remained unexplored. This multiple case study investigated how high school teachers believed Kaizena, a digital audio feedback technology, influenced their writing instruction and self-efficacy. Participants, who were drawn from the global Kaizena user base, included a user group of 3 United States teachers and a user group of 3 international teachers to determine how both groups used Kaizena and whether differences in use occurred in either environment. Data sources included individual teacher interviews, participant journals, and artifacts such as teacher-created writing assignments and rubrics. Data analysis included both single case and cross case analyses. Single case analysis included coding and categorizing of interview and participant journal data and content analysis of artifacts. Cross case analysis included identifying emerging themes and discrepant data. Results indicated that all 6 teachers both believed they gave more high quality, personalized feedback to students in less time with the audio feature of Kaizena than with written feedback and did, in fact, provide documents confirming this higher quality. As a result, using Kaizena positively influenced their self-efficacy. This study contributes to positive social change by providing insights into a feedback tool that could improve high school writing instruction.