Audio, autonomy and authenticity: constructive comments and conversations captured by the learner

This poster describes a university-wide project designed to develop learner autonomy. The Student Audio Notes Project (SANP) involved students recording personal audio notes and conversations at their discretion. It built upon work that considered approaches to the design of audio feedback (Nortcliffe and Middleton, 2008). Usually the tutor controls the process of recording and distributing audio feedback; however, in one successful approach involving the recording of lab or studio-based feedback conversations, it was noted that a transfer of responsibility from the student to the tutor had unnecessarily occurred due to the ownership of the technology. SANP set out to discover if and how students would use devices if they were in control and to what extent 'rich, relevant and real world contexts' (Herrington and Herrington 2006) would be evident in the notes.ApproachSANP gave away discrete, large capacity MP3 recorders to 60 students from across the faculties who joined the project following an open call for participation. Participants attended a drop-in induction session where they heard the ideas of other participants and recorded their own statements of interest. These initial participant recordings were used to seed a project podcast from the VLE, which also hosted guidance materials. Students were asked to keep a record of how they used the devices. Other data were collected through surveys and focus groups.Results from the year-long project will be included in the poster. They will reveal how the student expectations for the use of MP3 recorders compared to their actual use. Participants were encouraged to think creatively about their use of the recorders. For example, during project induction many explained that their interest came from a need to record lectures due to difficulties with note-taking. The project hopes to find out if participants recorded lectures, did they listen back? Did they attempt to summarise lectures? Did they involve other people? Did they share their recordings? The poster will report on these and other ideas proposed in the project materials, which included recording summaries of sessions with peers, recording group work decisions, and peer reflective reviews following assessment. Herrington, A. and J. Herrington. 2006. Authentic learning environments in higher education. Hershey, PA; London : Information Science Pub Nortcliffe, Anne and Andrew Middleton. 2008. A three year case study of using audio to blend the engineer's learning environment. Engineering Education, Journal of the Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre, Vol. 3 Issue 2.