How Audio Feedback Via Social Media Can Drive Engagement and Enhance Instruction

While online learning excels in certain areas, it chronically suffers in others. Among the latter, student engagement, personal connection, and student-teacher interaction have been areas of focus for educators and researchers practically since the birth of the digital learning environment. Engagement in all learning environments, furthermore, is a topic of ongoing concern. A recent study conducted by Yueting Xu, a researcher at the School of English and Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guanghzhou, China, purports to have found a piece of the puzzle. An instructor of a university level English language course decided that, instead of providing written feedback, she would use a popular social media platform WeChat to record her comments on student assignments verbally.