A role for technology in enhancing students’ engagement with feedback

This paper explores the potential of technology-enabled feedback to improve student learning. ‘Technology, Feedback, Action!: The impact of learning technology upon students’ engagement with their feedback’ aimed to evaluate how a range of technical interventions might encourage students to engage with feedback and formulate actions to improve future learning. The study used qualitative methods and worked in partnership with 23 undergraduate students to explore their experiences of receiving different forms of feedback with varying degrees of technical intervention including, but not limited to, electronic feedback with grades withheld; online grade publication; criteria-based feedback; and more traditional feedback methods. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, student participants were encouraged to articulate their experiences of feedback. The online publication of grades and feedback and the adaptive release of grades were found to significantly enhance students’ engagement with their feedback. Data were analysed using a thematic approach, and the main themes were used to inform the development of a series of good practice guides. The findings are discussed in the context of current literature.     

The Effects of Social Support,Depression, and Stress on Drinking Behaviors in a College Student Sample

Social support research contends that supportive interactions provide a buffer wherein individuals are protected from increased risk due to negative affect. The present study investigated the relationships between social support and college students' stress, depression, and alcohol use. A total of 54 students completed questionnaires in exchange for extra course credit. Results demonstrated that stress and depression were correlated with one another and that social support was negatively correlated with each of these outcomes. Depression, but not stress, was correlated with increased drinking behavior. Overall, social support was negatively correlated with alcohol consumption; however, depression moderated the effect of social support such that support and alcohol consumption were negatively correlated for participants with higher depression whereas support and alcohol consumption were positively correlated for individuals with lower depression. These findings partially confirm existing theories of alcohol use that hypothesize differences between self-medicating drinkers and social, sensation-seeking drinkers.     

Motion Pictures

The American Film Institute Guide to College Courses in Film and Television (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis. Books, 1973—$5.95, paper)

Joseph McBride, Orson Welles (192 pp.)

Colin McArthur, Underworld USA (176 pp.)

Alan Lovell and Jim Hillier, Studies in Documentary (176 pp.)

Joel E. Siegel, Val Lewton: the Reality of Terror (176 pp.)

Arnold Gassan's A Chronology of Photography (Light Impressions, Box 3012, Rochester, N.Y. 14614, 1972—$10.50/ 7.95)     

General Mass Communications

Alan Gowans' The Unchanging Arts: New Forms for the Traditional Functions of Art in Society (J. B. Lippincott, $12.95)

Manley R. Irwin's The Telecommunications Industry: Integration vs. Competition (Praeger Special Studies in U.S. Economic and Social Development, $11.00).

Robert Shelton and Burt Goldblatt's The Country Music Story (Arlington House, 81 Centre Ave., New Rochelle, N.Y. 10801, $7.95).

Howard Stephenson (ed.) Handbook of Public Relations (McGraw-Hill, $24.50– second edition)

Scott M. Cutlip and Allen H. Center's Effective Public Relations (Prentice-Hall, $11.95).     

Popular Illustration

Jim Kalett People and Crowds: A Photographic Album for Artists and Designers (New York: Dover Publications, 1978—$5.00, paper)

W.H. Hutchinson The World, The Work & the West of W.H.D. Koerner (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978—$35.00)

Philippe Garner, ed. The Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts: 1890-1940 (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979—$35.00)

Colin Naylor and Genesis P-Orridge, eds. Contemporary Artists (London: St. James Press/New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977—E25.00/$50.00)     

Commonwealth Media

Television, Censorship and the Law, by Colin R. Munro (208 pp.---$22.00)

Characteristics of Local Media Audiences, by Ray Brown (130 pp.---$23.00)

Newspapers as Organizations, by Lars Engwall (288 pp.---$29.0O)

Broadcasting and Youth (London: Calouste Gulbenian Foundation, 98 Portland Place, London W1N 4ET, 1979---£1.70 or about $4.00, paper)

Carl Gardner, ed. Media, Politics & Culture: A Socialist View (London: Macmillan/Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanties Press, 1979---$21.50/9.75)

Asa Briggs, Governing the BBC (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1979---£10.00 or about $22.00)

Graham Cleverley's The Kettering Standoff: A Study of a Strike (Southhamption: Aeropagus, 1978---price not given, but available in hardback and paper)

Paul Hoch's The Newspaper Game: The Political Sociology of the Press (London and New York: Marian Boyars Ltd., 1974, released US in 1979---$10.00)

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC Information Services, Ottawa, Ontario K1A ON2, Canada---available free on request, paper)

Australia: Henry Mayer tells us of nine recent publications on page     

Barriers to resource sharing among higher education libraries a report to the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP)

This paper describes the user-focused approach to information skills at MMU Library. It covers the following cycle: identifying training needs at three levels (organisation, group and individual); developing a training strategy and materials; marketing information skills within MMU. Specifically, it describes how we went about discovering what our users wanted, creating and delivering what they needed, and how we ‘sold’ it back to them.