Abstract:

Feedback in online higher education is frequently conceptualised as a transactional process of transmitting information, yet growing scholarship points to its potential as a dialogic and relational practice. Recent studies emphasise the importance of meaningful, feedforward-oriented and transformational feedback practices, but many lecturers continue to rely on traditional written commentary, with limited exploration of alternative modalities such as audio feedback. This proposed study seeks to reposition feedback as relationship by examining the affordances of audio feedback in an online learning context. Drawing on relational learning theory and interpretivist perspectives, the study will conceptually frame audio feedback as a means of conveying presence, care and encouragement, which written feedback may struggle to achieve. To enrich this theoretical discussion, the study intends to trial audio feedback with a small group of online humanities students on a formative assignment. Their experiences and perceptions will be gathered through short reflective responses and thematically analysed to identify whether and how audio feedback is perceived as more personal, relational and supportive by the students themselves. The anticipated contribution of the study is to demonstrate if and how audio feedback can operate as a relational, dialogic practice in online higher education.

Keywords:

Audio feedback, relational feedback, online learning, distance learning, private higher education, South Africa.