Screencasting: supportive feedback for EFL remedial writing students

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore screencasting as a computer-mediated feedback approach for Arabic native (L1) speakers taking an English as a foreign language (EFL) college remedial writing class. Design/methodology/approach This case study focused on an EFL remedial writing class consisting of eight Lebanese, Arabic L1 students at a private university in Lebanon. Students received screencast feedback through Jing® for one essay intended to assist them with subsequent revision. The multimodal screencast videos included indirect corrections, annotations, and oral commentary guided by a rubric. Students then completed a perspectives survey on screencast feedback. The instructor also led an informal group discussion to allow for further elaboration of students’ responses. Findings Students reported that screencasting’s multimodality provided for better engagement and support of learning preferences. They also perceived screencast feedback to be clearer and more useful than traditional written feedback. Research limitations/implications This study applied screencasting to address feedback challenges pertaining to clarity, learning preferences, and engagement. As this was a classroom case study, further research using a larger sample is recommended. Originality/value The aim of research into computer-mediated human feedback is to address such challenges as increasing student engagement, improving clarity, and responding to students’ preferences. Studies of screencast feedback have been few, particularly for EFL writing students. A survey of the literature indicates the need to explore contextualized classroom feedback case studies and approaches to enhance feedback.

Using screencasting to give feedback for academic writing

“…An interesting aspect of this current study is the emotional component. This is consistent to what has been reported elsewhere in the literature (Ali 2016;Cranny 2016;Ghosn-Chelala and Al-Chibani 2018;Mathieson 2012). In fact, much of the literature reports that students have a positive orientation towards screencasting.…”

“…Most of the studies that claim screencasting is more effective than other forms of feedback, are based on self-reported measures, such as Likert-type surveys (Ghosn-Chelala and Al-Chibani 2018;Orlando 2016;Mathieson 2012;Seror 2012). Few studies were found reporting that students who have received feedback via screencasting show more improvements than a comparison group (Tekinarslan 2013; Ali 2016).…”

EFL Lecturers’ Perception and Practice of Screencast Feedback

“…Many believe that feedback may inform students' learning goals, performance, and strategies to improve their learning (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Written corrective feedback on language may directly or indirectly inform necessary changes to improve students" linguistic accuracy (Biber et al, 2011;Ghosn-Chelala & Al-Chibani, 2018) and feedback on content, organization, and rhetoric may help students in making overall revision (Goldstein, 2004;Hartshorn & Evans, 2015).…”

“…Screencast feedback is a version of computer-mediated multimodal video feedback provided by a teacher (human feedback) (see Ware & Warschauer, 2006) by recording the teacher giving feedback on a digital copy of student work using a screen-capture software such as Jing, Screencast-O-Matic, and Google Meet which can record the teacher"s audio/video along with computer screen where student"s writing is seen and commented. The software also record teacher"s mouse movements, annotations, comments, highlighting, direct and indirect error correction, as well as written and verbal commentary (see Bakla, 2020;Ghosn-Chelala & Al-Chibani, 2018). Therefore, it can be positioned between written feedback and face-to-face writing conferences (Lee, 2017, p. 131).…”

“…An increasing number of studies has started to investigate both audio and screencast feedback in L2 writing contexts using both experimental and naturalistic settings. Studies in this field predominantly examined students' perception (Alvira, 2016;Ghosn-Chelala & Al-Chibani, 2018;Orlando, 2016;Özkul & Ortactepe, 2017;Tseng & Yeh, 2019), students" preference (Cunningham, 2019;Tseng & Yeh, 2019), and uptake (Bakla, 2020;Cunningham, 2019;Hung, 2016). Researchers have also investigated the effectiveness of video feedback (Bakla, 2020;Özkul & Ortactepe, 2017;Tseng & Yeh, 2019).…”