As Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the School of Marketing at this top-tier Australian university, Tania regards feedback as key to improving her students’ academic writing and developing written communications skills - key in any discipline, but particularly so in Marketing.
“Regardless of the type of student, whether they are undergrad or postgrad, and whether they are local or international, feedback is a critical building block for their learning, the consolidation of learning, and an extension of their learning,” she explains.
In order to aid this process she also structures her assessments in a way that helps them to develop the writing skills from a competent base and build on that with each course as they move through the program.
With so many students the challenge Tania faced was personalisation of the feedback for each student, which is where Turnitin has been a huge support for her. One of the ways in which she ensures her feedback is personalised and richer is by using voice comments in Turnitin.
“It doesn’t need to be too long – a couple of minutes will do it, and especially if you supplement that with a little bit of written feedback, then it makes all the difference in terms of really helping the student to understand what you mean by a critique or a piece of feedback that’s relevant and very specific to their work.”
Tania was a Turnitin Global Award Honorable Mention in 2016