Multimodal feedback

In this article we are going to be exploring multimodal feedback approaches, looking at what they are and why you may want to incorporate them into your feedback practice.  

When we talk about multimodal feedback we are concerned with the various ways or ‘modes’ in which meaning is conveyed. In this sense feedback is rarely monomodal, even text relies on elements such as bold and italics as modes of communicating additional meaning beyond the words themselves (Lamb 2018). 

Conversations around multimodality are often simplified to talking about video or audio, but this obscures the various modalities at play. Video isn’t just one modality: each video will contain a unique mix of tone, volume, posture, expression, etc. So rather than just multimodality, it’s useful to consider the ‘multimodal richness’ of different approaches, “where knowledge is conveyed across a broad range of resources” (Lamb, 2018, p4). This means moving beyond text, video or audio and towards considering how approaches may be used together to facilitate educational experiences. 

Why consider rich multimodal feedback? 

Rich multimodal feedback offers a personalised touch, making feedback more engaging and individualised. In turn this helps to create more dialogic approaches to feedback (Martin 2020, Lamb 2018). As Lamb (2018) notes, it not only enhances the academic credibility of different modalities, but also encourages students to explore diverse and potentially more impactful ways of showcasing their learning. Moreover, this approach enables more in-depth feedback; Martin (2020) notes that just 1 minute of audio or video feedback can convey as much detail as approximately 6 minutes of writing, emphasising the efficiency and richness of multimodal feedback methods. 

When to implement multimodal feedback 

Kress (2005) discusses multimodality and its possibilities in relation to two key areas: the knowledge/information that is to be conveyed and the needs of the audience. He notes that multimodality can be most effective when purposefully choosing approaches in relation to these dimensions. Below we discuss just a couple of examples:  

Practical skills 

Providing clear and concise feedback or feedforward on practical skills can be difficult to do via traditional means. It is often easier to show rather than tell and there are a variety of multimodal approaches we could employ to provide better and more effective feedback for practical skills: 

• Modelling – using approaches like video we can model what the practical skill should look like and demonstrate how to close the gap between what students are currently doing and the desired standard.  
• Annotated videos and images – you may already capture images or videos of your students performing practical tasks to aid students’ self-reflection but annotating them could be a useful approach to providing feedback.  For example, if a student is practicing how to suture, you could draw where the stitches should have been, providing them with clear and understandable feedback on how they need to improve.  

These digitally facilitated approaches are similar to face-to-face methods that you may use, but they also have additional advantages, such as the ability to store them and review them later. 

Student receptiveness to feedback 

Think about how we deliver bad news, in clinical settings we often recognise the benefits of personal face to face approaches. The reality is that delivering feedback often requires that we deliver bad news to students, but how we deliver feedback can have a big impact on how successfully students use it. As Carless and Boud (2018) have highlighted, a student’s ability to “manage their emotional equilibrium impacts on their engagement with critical commentary”. Audio and video feedback allows us the opportunity to make the feedback more personal, empathetic and encouraging by effectively employing elements such as our tone and expressions. All these elements work towards establishing a supportive dialogue as opposed to delivering final, immutable, judgements on student ability. 

Ready to try? – Top Tips 

If you are thinking about trying out some different approaches to feedback, consider the following: 

There is often an upfront time investment. Multimodal approaches can be just as quick or quicker than traditional approaches but will likely take longer initially as you develop your working practices. 

Be aware of elements such as your tone, volume, posture and other non-verbal cues, and make sure they support the message you are trying to convey. 

Think about how students will be using the feedback as this can help highlight the best mix of modalities. For example, information that students will need to revisit often and find quickly might be better as text as it’s easier to scan and find specific elements. 

Audio feedback can be easily incorporated into QMPlus assignments via ‘Feedback Files’ or recorded in Turnitin feedback studio (Click here to learn about recording voice comments in Turnitin) 

References 

Carless, D. and Boud, D. (2018) ‘The development of student feedback literacy: Enabling uptake of feedback’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), pp. 1315–1325. doi:10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354.  

Kress, G. (2005) ‘Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning’, Computers and Composition, 22(1), pp. 5–22. doi:10.1016/j.compcom.2004.12.004.  

Lamb, J. (2018) ‘To boldly go: Feedback as Digital, multimodal dialogue’, Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 2(3), p. 49. doi:10.3390/mti2030049.  

Martin, D. (2020) ‘Providing Students with Multimodal Feedback Experiences’, Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education, 5(1).