Students learn more successfully when timely and appropriate feedback is provided. Information technology has made it possible for students to receive to receive their feedback electronically (mostly via e-mail) without having to wait to receive written comments on assignments and exams during the following class meeting or much later. According to Media Richness Theory (MRT) and Social Presence Theory (SPT), voice-mail should be a more desirable means of communication than text-based e-mail or handwritten communication. This polit study was to explore the effectiveness of using e-mail and internet-enabled voice mail to provide feedback to students as compared to traditional handwritten comments.
Using an experimental design, 34 undergraduate students enrolled in one health education course at a southeast university in Spring 2002 were randomly assigned to v-mail group (receiving voice feedback over the Internet, n=10), e-mail group (receiving feedback via text based e-mail messages, n=12), and longhand group (receiving handwritten comments, n=12). At the end of Spring 2002, an annonymous 46-item questionnaire with established measures was administered all three groups with questions tailored to the experiment conditions. Chi-square analyses did not reveal any significant differences among three groups in perceive medium richness, social presence, and feedback quality. Specifically, longhand feedback received the highest mean scores followed by voice feedback and e-mail feedback in “transmitting various cues,” “tailoring messages to personal characteristics,” and “using rich and varied language.” Similarly, handwritten comments were ranked highest followed by e-mail feedback and voice feedback because they are more “personal,” “warmer,” “more humanizing,” and “more sensitive.” Compared to e-mail and voice mail feedback, handwritten feedback had somewhat higher means because they are considered more “helpful,” more “useful,” more “detailed,” “clearer,” more “convenient” and have “more content.”
The above findings indicate that students somewhat preferred receiving longhand feedback to e-mail or voice mail. Such results contradict the prediction of MRT, SPT and the literature. This may be caused by the very small sample size. Larger sample size should be employed to further examine learners’ preferred means of receiving feedback from health educators in future health education research.
Learner Objectives: By the end of the session, the participant will be able to 1. examine elements of measuring quality of feedback 2. compare students’ preferred means of receiving feedback (e-mail, voice mail or longhand), and 3. discuss the importance of having appropriate sample size in health education research.