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Improved Ability to Understand Nuance: Students indicated that they were better able to understand the instructor's intent. Students also indicated that instructor encouragement and emphasis were clearer.Increased Involvement: Students felt less isolated in the online environment and were more motivated to participate when hearing their instructor's voice.Increased Content Retention: Students reported that they retained audio feedback better than text feedback. Interestingly, they also reported that they retained the course content to which the feedback was related better than with text feedback. These self-reported findings were supported by the fact that students incorporated into their final projects three times as much audio feedback as text feedback.Increased Instructor Caring: 

Providing feedback for students is one of the most important (and often most difficult) part of being a teacher. Providing feedback to students in audio format has been the topic of many recent studies. In a study done by the Sloan Consortium, audio feedback was received very positively by students. 

Multiple Submission Quirk - and Work-Around We've learned recently that there is a quirk with Crocodoc when there are multiple submissions. When a student submits more than one assignment attempt, you can choose which to grade from SpeedGrader. If you grade an earlier attempt and provide feedback via Crocodoc on the assignment, the student can only view the latest submission, thereby missing any feedback you provide. There is no way for the student to choose which assignment submission to view. As a workaround, you can annotate on Crocodoc and then download the annotated document to attach to your comment. A PDF version of the assignment file (with annotations) can be downloaded by both student and instructor.

Power to the People! Jennifer Ditkoff, Keene State College Give students the power to guide their own education. Using Wallwisher an instructor gains insight on student needs and opens up a classroom discussion. After library instruction short tutorials are posted on Voicethread. Students experiment with the concepts, actively participating in assessing their own research efforts, as well as their classmates. Students have control over their own learning experience and can revisit the course materials throughout the semester to add content, ask questions, and receive feedback. Diigo is used rather than a static handout. Students provide links to helpful materials for their peers, highlighting the community aspect of ongoing education. Jennifer Ditkoff has worked in academic, public and medical libraries, learning every type of classification system, including the elusive Cutter system. When she is not troubleshooting electronic resources, she teaches information literacy, staffs the reference desk, and shows up early to committee meetings. She enjoys learning about new technologies.

He says 'effect sizes' are much the best way of answering the question 'what has the greatest influence on student learning'. An effect-size of 1.0 is typically associated with: * advancing learner's achievement by one year, or improving the rate of learning by 50%, * a correlation between some variable (e.g., amount of homework) and achievement of approximately .50. * average students receiving that treatment exceeding 84% of students not receiving that treatment. * A two grade leap in GCSE, e.g. from a C to an A grade. An effect size of 1.0 is clearly enormous! (It is defined as an increase of one standard deviation)

As ambitious as we are as students, we're not always guaranteed good grades or perfect scores despite long nights and exam crams. With nothing more than a few syllabi and red ink, keeping track of your grades and measuring your performance with a calculator is outdated and unnecessary. Weighted grades and a failed exam can turn a trip to the calculator into a worrisome mess of numbers and unmet expectations. In your pocket, however, you already have all the tools necessary for instant grade-ification. Grades 2 is your personal performance record that crunches all of the numbers so you don't have to, providing near instant feedback on what you need to aim for to maintain your target grade (preferably an A). Jeremy Olson is at it again, refining the user experience from Grades and delivering a free update that adds a GPA calculator and due dates to keep you on schedule.

The intent is to help anyone create their own textbooks, on their own topics, for their own audience.

recommended at NECQL 4/17/10