‘Feedback: Virtual reality, analytics and performance analysis’
Presenters: Martin Loomes (School of Science & Technology – Dean),
George Dafoulas (School of Science & Technology – Computer Science),
Nic James (School of Science & Technology – Sport)
The use of technology in providing feedback enables some techniques that will be novel to many. We will present real-time analytics using Google Glass to overlay feedback on live presentations, the use of a web-based tool to provide group and individual feedback with analytics, and explore the ways that professional sports teams use feedback and analytics to improve performance to see what we can learn.
Outline: Technology must always be seen as subservient to pedagogy, and not something to be used for its own sake. However, discovering what technology can do is not simple. This symposium presents three different ways that technology is used for feedback within the school of science and technology, and explores ways that these can be brought together in clever and novel ways.
The simplest format is the SOB-tool being used within the school to provide feedback to individual students on their performance relative to the rest of the group, and their profile against categories of learning outcomes. This feedback is also available to staff, and is used extensively to make changes and customise learning opportunities for individuals. A limitation, however, is that this is feedback at a fairly coarse level – there are 120 things we observe, but feedback at levels finer-grained than this are not easily represented.
A more sophisticated way of using technology is to provide feedback “live” while a task is being completed, but in ways that are not obtrusive. This enables the student to adapt in real time. Moreover by recording the feedback synchronised with the activity, events can be replayed and discussed as first class objects. The challenge is finding ways to achieve this that do not interfere with the activity – for example, interrupting a presentation to suggest improvements is rarely helpful as it destroys the flow and is not natural. We have been exploring the use of Google Glass to overlay feedback via a “head up display” enabling students to get prompts and hints in real time.
The ultimate aim of feedback is to improve student performance, but we rarely consider how all of the feedback is brought together in an holistic fashion. Elite sports teams, however, are increasingly using sophisticated techniques to collect data related to performance, and analyse it in ways that enable feedback in very targeted ways. This supports the use of known ways to improve performance, but also allows emergent properties to be explored. We will explore how these techniques could be applied in a teaching context, and what we might gain by doing so.
Keywords: Technology, feedback, virtual realities
Session learning outcomes: Participants should be stimulated to explore technologies for feedback, and view their practices in a more critical light.
