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Provide audio feedback for an Assignment (using PoodLL)
Why use it?
Audio feedback can be a very useful alternative or supplement to written feedback.
Audio feedback means “more feedback”. A teacher can say a lot more in 3 minutes than they could write.
Audio feedback means “clearer feedback”. More detail means less ambiguity, and speech can communicate meaning beyond the words; vocal emphasis and variations of pace can focus attention on the most important or complicated aspects.
Audio feedback feels “more personal” than written. The teacher’s voice can convey their interest and engagement in the student’s work, and can allow the tutor to deliver negative or critical feedback more tactfully.
Step 1: Add an assignment
See our guide on Assignment set-up guide (individual and group) for the settings. When setting up the Assignment, make sure that you have enabled ‘Audio feedback (PoodLL)’ in Feedback Types.
Step 2: Students can submit
Note that students do not need to have submitted anything for marks and feedback to be entered.
Tip: Click on the question mark icon next to any setting to display extra help or click on Moodle Docs for this page link at the bottom of each page in Moodle for accessing context-specific documentation.
Step 3: View the submissions table
Once the deadline for students to submit has passed, click on the assignment. This will bring up the Grading summary which will show the number of participants and submissions. Click on View all submissions to view the submissions table.
The marking/submissions table lists all students and their submissions. If ‘anonymous submissions’ is enabled submissions are identified by a number unique to this assignment.
N.B. Those with a Manager role can view student identities even when ‘anonymous submissions’ is enabled.
The table has a variety of filters and columns - see more details on the submissions table guide.
Click on the red Grade button to mark an individual piece of work.
Step 4: Grade an individual assignment
Make sure you are in a suitable place to do an audio recording and are working on a device with a microphone.
Clicking on Grade will bring up a marking screen with grading options on the right hand side. If the student submitted a PDF file the individual piece of work in a window on the left hand side. While Moodle automatically attempts to convert other file types to PDFs, there are occasions when this isn’t successful. If this is the case, or if the student did not submit anything, this window will be blank. PDF files can be annotated using the tools at the top of the page, for more details see our feedback using pdf annotation guide.
Audio feedback
Scroll down to Audio feedback (PooDLL) and click Allow in the small pop window to allow Moodle to access your camera and microphone then Close.
In the recording window, click the red Record button when you are ready to start.
Click Stop to finish. Audio of this sort should be short – no longer than 3 minutes.
On completion, the Play button will be available. Click it to listen to your recording.
If you need to re-record your feedback, just click Record again and the original will be overwritten with the new one.
When you are happy with your recording, click Upload.
Remember to Save changes to complete the process.
When a student views an assignment after grading, they will see a play bar in the Audio Feedback section. They just click to play the recording on any device with audio playback.
Marking workflow state
Marking workflow is enabled by default. The marking workflow can be updated by selecting the correct option from the drop down list. E.g from Not marked to Marking completed, or In review.
NB. In review is a useful way to flag up any submissions that require moderation from a second marker.
Notify students
This box is ticked by default, however if you are using marking workflow (default setting) students will not be notified until all marks and feedback are released. See our guide on using marking workflow for assignments for more information.
Save the marks and feedback
Once all marks and feedback are entered. Click Save changes or Save and show next to move onto the next submission.
Step 5: Release feedback and marks
Marking workflow state
Marking workflow is enabled by default. To release the marks using marking workflow see below
When you are ready to release marks to students, select the submissions for which you want to use marking workflow using the Select box to left of each submission – to select all submissions, click the Select all box under Select. Scroll to the bottom of the page and from the drop-down menu With selected… select Set marking workflow state and Go. You will be asked to confirm, click ok.
Select Released from the drop down options and then save changes. At this stage (and earlier stages) you can choose to Notify students by selecting Yes to generate an email.
Students will then be able to review their grades and feedback.
N.B. If ‘anonymous submissions’ is in use with marking workflow, you will need to reveal student identities before the grades are released. To do this, select Reveal student identities in the Grading action drop-down menu at the top of the submissions table. If you cannot find this option, you will need to ask someone with Teacher (Editor) or higher access to do it.