Distance Education feedback in the pandemic: reflecting on HOU student preferences

Περίληψη

The quality of the feedback provided in Distance Education has been explored in a number of studies (see, e.g., Calfoglou, 2010, Malliotaki, 2019, Georgountzou & Calfoglou, 2019 on Hellenic Open University feedback processes specifically) and the learner’s solitude and need for support have been pointed to. On the assumption that these elements are more likely to be accentuated in the pandemic, the present study presents and reflects on data exploring student preferences with regard to written feedback on assignments and dissertations collected over the years in the ‘Teaching English as a foreign/international language’ postgraduate programme of the Hellenic Open University, focusing on the link to the missing face-to-face contact experience. The data discussed are responses to questionnaire items reflecting students’ choices in terms of explicitness, evaluativeness, tentativeness, interrogatives or affirmatives and reveal an overwhelming predilection for explicit, tentative, non-judgemental feedback portraying a genuine attempt at meaning reconstruction on the part of the tutor, who is thus expected to act as an engaged collaborator and supporter (cf. Calfoglou, 2010). We argue that this encounter with the Other needs to be reinforced in DE, especially in times of uncertainty, as in the pandemic, and that this can be done through a reconfiguration of the student-tutor role, following Biesta’s (2006, 2010, 2012) idea of the education process seen as relational. This may open up interesting paths in Distance Education research and practices on both tertiary and other levels of education, beyond the constraints of the pandemic.