“ Will They Listen to Me? ” Investigating the Utilization of Audio Feedback in Higher Education

Many studies have discussed the importance of technology in delivering feedback to students ’ assignments since its deployment provides convenience, timeliness, rich information, asynchronous discussion, and social presence. However, the effectiveness of audio feedback has received very scant investigation in the context of higher education in Indonesia. To fill such an empirical void, this exploratory sequential mixed method probes the students ’ perceptions towards the use of audio feedback. Thirty-two undergraduate students from one of the public universities in Bengkulu, Indonesia, majoring in Early Childhood and Studies and taking English as a compulsory subject, participated in this study. Three data collection techniques were deployed to triangulate the data. A questionnaire was distributed to examine students ’ perceptions of audio feedback, followed by a freeform writing and semi-structured interview to draw more pictures of the students ’ experiences of this feedback mode. The results show that even though all participants in this study had never received this type of feedback, most participants had positive perceptions of using audio feedback. They mentioned they got thorough, detailed, and personal feedback, so they felt engaged in the learning processes. This finding is expected to enrich the knowledge of the effectiveness of audio feedback and to encourage eager teaching practitioners to use it in their


INTRODUCTION
As one of the most important components of the evaluation, feedback facilitates students' language development. In addition, feedback is claimed as a powerful strategy for improving students' learning outcomes (Aslam & Khan, 2021;Mulati et al., 2020). In the context of higher education, teachers may provide written feedback to their students when commenting on their assignments. As students receive adequate feedback, they are more likely to be engaged in the learning process, which can result in increased task performance.
Feedback is not only about scoring or giving grades on students' work. It is an important component in which teachers provide clear and detailed information regarding students' performance. Feedback can be provided in the form of correcting, clarifying, motivating, and encouraging ideas (Forsythe & Johnson, 2016;Ghazali et al., 2020;Hattie & Timperly, 2007). However, feedback may demotivate students if the comments or any information given by the teachers cannot be understood or is marked in red (Ferris, 2007). Therefore, providing insightful and meaningful feedback will help students improve their work.
Challenges are reported in previous literature, particularly in universities, concerning giving and getting written feedback. Written feedback is comprehensive because it addresses a student's errors, yet some information cannot be understood. Besides, one of the issues of written feedback is the amount of time required to deliver written feedback to students' assignments (Ferris, 2007). When the class size is large enough, teachers will likely have less time to comment on the students' written assignments, resulting in delayed, extremely brief written comments, or worse, no feedback at all. In other words, it is time-consuming.
There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the challenges and difficulties of teaching English to a large group of students. Cann (2014) mentioned that when more students enroll in higher education, class sizes expand, resulting in increased academic burdens and a longer time between the submission and return of work. Al-Bakri (2016) found that many papers during a limited time make the teachers unable to have writing conferences when the students need follow-up explanations about the feedback given. Therefore, Essel (2020) suggests that teachers devise modern ways of giving feedback by sending feedback via e-mail as regularly or punctually as possible. To tackle the issue, individual conferencing or oral feedback is seen to be less time-consuming than delivering written comments to student writing; nevertheless, this may not be feasible in some settings if there are no office hours or if the teacher/student is not available outside of the classroom (Solhi & Eǧinli, 2020). As most Indonesian classes consist of a large group of students, both modes appear less effective in coping with the nature of feedback, which should lead to students' improvement in their performance.
Given recent technological advancements, teachers now have a number of options for providing feedback to their students, one of which is audio feedback. Digitally recorded feedback comments are a promising option for face-to-face and text-based feedback. Unlike face-to-face interactions, recordings give learners a lasting artifact that they can revisit as many times as needed (Ryan et al., 2019). Several studies have used audio feedback to solve at least some of the aforementioned issues. Educators also believe that they are more efficient in producing text-based comments (Knauf, 2016;Morris & Chikwa, 2016). Students are more satisfied with audio feedback, especially when it comes to the volume and detail of the feedback (Denton, 2014;Hennessy & Forrester, 2014;Lunt & Curran, 2010;Orlando, 2016;Voelkel & Mello, 2014). They are likely to improve their performance as the resultant recording provides more explanations and suggestions. This meets with the nature of feedback pointed out by Nicol (2010), who says that good feedback should be forwardthinking, suggesting ways for students to enhance their work for future tasks.
Another benefit of utilizing audio feedback is more personal than written feedback (Gould & Day, 2013;Merry & Orsmond, 2008;Parkes & Fletcher, 2017;Voelkel & Mello, 2014). It is engaging for students, eliciting perceptions that tutors 'cared' more and so improving student engagement with learning (Ice et al., 2007;Lunt & Curran, 2010). This could be because the audio has a tone that allows students to feel as if they were in the presence of their teacher while listening to feedback. The students thus value audio feedback for its clarity, ease of use, highlighting of areas of strength and weakness in students' tasks, and personalization. Audio feedback provides convenience, timeliness, rich information, asynchronous discussion, and social presence (Zhan, 2022).
Despite the benefits of delivering audio feedback, scholars have also revealed contradictory findings on the potential of audio feedback, highlighting its drawbacks (Alharbi & Alghammas, 2021;Fawcett & Oldfield, 2016;Johnson & Cooke, 2016;Voelkel & Mello, 2014). Johnson and Cooke (2016) found that most students chose written feedback over audio feedback. They further defended their decision by claiming that written feedback was easier to access than audio feedback, which required downloading. Voelkel and Mello (2014) discovered that students referred to written feedback more than they referred to audio feedback, which could be attributed to the ease of re-reading written input as compared to re-listening to audio feedback. The current study conducted by Alharbi and Alghammas (2021) found that half of the participants preferred written input over audio feedback. The poor quality of recordings in the feedback files was the cause of students' preference for written feedback over its audio counterpart. This becomes a significant challenge for students who receive audio feedback because the presence of extraneous noises while recording the feedback prevents them from properly listening to the intended advice in such recordings.
From the aforementioned findings, we realized that providing audio feedback remains debatable regarding its effectiveness. Also, to the best of our knowledge, little attention has been given to investigating the students' perceptions of the utilization of audio feedback, particularly in Indonesia, where most classrooms have a considerable number of students. Hence, this study aims to fill the existing gap. The results of this study may shed some light and provide a recommendation based on the finding, particularly for teachers' feedback practices in general English classes. This present study addresses the following research question: What are the students' perceptions of audio feedback?

Feedback
Feedback has been considered a fundamental part of teaching and learning (Ha et al., 2021;Selvaraj & Azman, 2020), and it has been claimed empirically as an indispensable component in learning English that has a strong effect on students' academic achievement (Donaghue, 2020;Forsythe & Johnson, 2016;Wisniewski et al., 2020). Besides, its relevance is recognized by higher education practitioners who devote a significant amount of time and effort to providing feedback on assignments (Voelkel & Mello, 2014).
Feedback may come from teachers, instructors, online marking programs, or peers (Hyland & Hyland, 2006;Niu et al., 2021). In the context of teaching English, as long as the information is given directly by teachers and their students passively follow the suggestions, it is called feedback following the receptive transmission model; whereas, if the feedback involves two-way communication, it follows the constructivist model since teachers let students push their self-reflection after obtaining feedback by discussing with their teachers or peers (Askew & Lodge, 2000;Sun & Yang, 2021). Concerning the two models, previous scholars have also divided the kinds of feedback, namely teacher feedback and peer feedback. Teacher feedback focuses on teacher review, while peer feedback is less authoritarian, and it happens when students engage with others, for example, their peers, to give, receive, and discuss feedback (Min, 2005;Park, 2018).
Undoubtedly, feedback is essential to students' success in learning English, particularly in higher education (Gurzynski & Revesz, 2012;Lunt & Curran, 2010;Norris & Ortega, 2006;Sun & Yang, 2021;Zhai & Gao, 2018). Previous studies have shown the advantages of feedback on students' achievement. For instance, students perceived helpfulness in teacher feedback, particularly in specific areas, such as increasing their understanding of content, language, or organization of their writing (Choi, 2013;Lee, 2008;Park, 2018). In other skills, such as listening and reading, the implementation of feedback positively affects students' skills, especially in processing general information and inferring information (Pérez-Segura et al., 2022). Students also perceived the usefulness of immediate feedback so that they realized errors they had made while speaking (Ha et al., 2021). Besides, some other studies, which focus on corrective feedback, also show the effectiveness of oral and written corrective feedback for students' English development (Li & Vuono, 2019). Although a large and growing body of literature has investigated the impacts of feedback on students' L2 achievement, there is increasing concern about how tertiary students, in the context of EFL (Sun & Yang, 2021), react to feedback given by their lecturers in the form of audio.

Audio Feedback
The use of audio feedback is relatively new, particularly in the context of higher education (Lunt & Currant, 2010). It is a feedback mode given by teachers in the form of digital sound files, and students pay more attention to the teachers' comments from the audio (Hennessy & Forrester, 2014;Yu et al., 2020). Audio feedback can be delivered in a more personalized form, and it can be embedded into specific applications (King et al., 2008). Few studies have postulated the impact of using audio feedback on students' learning achievement. For instance, audio feedback embedded into screencast has been reported to be more supportive and encouraging than written feedback (Ice et al., 2007). Lunt and Currant (2010) claim that audio feedback using Audacity audio software MP3 can overcome students' problems and reduce anxiety. In addition, Rasi and Vuojarvi (2017) also found that audio feedback increased connectivity between students and teachers and helped students revise assignments.
Furthermore, Hattie and Timperley (2007), who conducted a meta-analysis of 7,000 studies to examine the types of feedback, found that audio feedback is the second most effective feedback that teachers can use. Jones and Gorra (2013) suggested that audio feedback can be properly used as a formative assessment in which teachers could give more detailed information to their students. However, some literature emerged that offers contradictory findings about the use of audio feedback. According to McCarthy (2015), audio feedback is not considered authentic in some instances. More recently, Sun and Yang (2021) found that audio feedback was not as clear as written feedback, and it also mitigated interpersonal connection and decreased personal touch from teachers. Due to the conflicting findings of the previous studies, it is unclear whether university students can benefit from this kind of feedback. Besides, since less research has been investigated in the context of EFL (Ha et al., 2021;Sun & Yang, 2021), this present study focuses on Indonesian university students' perceptions of audio feedback.

Research Design
In this study, an exploratory sequential mixed methods approach was adopted, with quantitative data augmented by qualitative data (Creswell, 2013). The study used a combination of quantitative data obtained from a questionnaire and qualitative data through a semi-structured interview to better understand students' perceptions of the audio feedback. Since this study sought to examine the perceptions of students toward the effectiveness of audio feedback, both a survey and a semi-structured interview were disseminated.

Research Site and Participants
One of the authors in this study acted as a teacher, who utilized audio feedback. Feedback was delivered (i.e., in the form of formative comments to the students) on some weekly written assignments consisting of various academic tasks. Due to the pandemic and the large class size, writing all the feedback on the students' assignments was unlikely. Hence, audio feedback seemed to be the right choice to give detailed, thorough, and personal feedback to 32 undergraduate students majoring in Early Childhood Studies (as the participants in this study) from one of the public universities in Bengkulu, Indonesia. The students were previously asked to participate in this study by completing the consent form.
As previously observed, none of the students in this study had any prior experience receiving audio feedback. The participants received formative feedback, which was recorded via the Audacity application. The feedback was emailed to each student individually in MP3 format (the highest file is almost 4 Mb) because this format takes smaller files than the WAV format. The audio files were 2 up to 5 minutes, depending on the feedback needed from the student's work.

Data Collection Techniques
Likert scale surveys and interviews were used to obtain the data. The survey questions adapted from Lunt and Currant (2010) are part of an earlier study into the functions and effectiveness of audio feedback. For the quantitative data, the questionnaire has nine items that were distributed to examine students' perceptions of audio feedback. The indicators were the effectiveness of audio feedback (items 1 to 4), the quality of audio (item 5), the accessibility (item 6), the preference for using audio feedback (items 7-8), and the punctuality in receiving audio feedback (item 9). We also provided two freeform questions in Google Forms to elicit more information from participants concerning their experiences with audio feedback. For the qualitative data, we used some questions based on the questionnaire to follow up with the data from the quantitative data.

Data Analysis Techniques
To determine the frequency and mean score for each questionnaire item, descriptive statistics were employed to investigate the quantitative data received from survey responses. The categorizing technique proposed by Joshi et al. (2015) was used to classify the Likert Scale mean score.

RESULTS
In this study, the findings were presented by displaying data collected from the survey and then inserting information from the interviews to triangulate and enrich existing data from the questionnaire results. Based on the results of the descriptive analysis listed in Tables 2 and 3, it can be inferred that the majority of participants have a favorable perception of audio feedback.  In the first indicator (see Table 2, items 1 to 4), the mean ratings for four items indicated that they accepted audio feedback as an effective method of receiving teacher correction. Almost all participants (83.9 percent) stated that audio feedback assisted them in recognizing what they had overlooked in their tasks. The following are some of the freewriting samples from the participants: (1) "...we can understand more about the review of our assignments with audio if something is absent in the work of the task so that it can be better in the future". (Freewriting excerpt from Student 10) A total of 26 out of 31 students believed audio feedback allowed them to obtain extensive, simple-to-understand, and personalized comments. In addition, this thorough audio feedback made it easier for the students to comprehend and motivated them to revise their assignments.
(8) "It motivated me because with this detailed audio feedback, I know exactly which ones in my assignments are missing so that I can correct them right away". (Interview excerpt from Student 2).
(9) "I feel that my lecturer thoroughly examined my assignment and provided a very detailed explanation of whether it was correct, ready to be turned in, or still required improvement". (Interview excerpt from Student 3).
Interestingly, from both freewriting and the interview, some participants claimed that they felt like they were interacting with or listening to their lecturers at the time, making it more appealing to listen to the feedback. They then revised their assignment based on the suggestions in the audio. Regarding accessibility, from the questionnaire, 38.7 percent strongly agreed, and 45.2 percent agreed, indicating that accessing audio feedback was not a problem. In contrast, only two of the 31 students who received feedback had a bad experience. The problem arose because the participants' smartphones could not open the audio feedback, which forced them first to switch on their laptops so they could hear the comments. In contrast, the others asserted they could open and listen to the feedback on their phone. Considering that other students did not echo this complaint, it is evident from the questionnaires that most students did not have difficulty accessing the feedback.
In the fourth indicator, concerning the students' preference for audio or written feedback, only two respondents preferred the latter mode to the prior one, while the remainder favored audio feedback. They chose audio feedback for a variety of reasons. The following are some excerpts from them: (12) "I like audio feedback because it clearly outlines all of the problems with my assignment. In contrast, written communication will take a little longer to understand and will also waste more time". (Freewriting excerpt from Student 5) (13) "I prefer audio feedback because I think I can access assignments faster than written ones". The majority of students were interested in receiving audio comments in the future (83.9 percent). Moreover, almost all of them unanimously felt that audio feedback was preferable since it was somewhat meaningful (87.5 percent).
Furthermore, we discovered that some students believed the feedback was so personalized that they were interested in it since it has its tone and intonation.
(15) "Because audio feedback includes tone, intonation, and stress, as a learner, it is easier for me to understand, and I prefer to listen to it rather than reading rigid written feedback". (Interview excerpt of Student 3)

DISCUSSION
While previous research has examined the students' perception of written feedback (Choi, 2013;Lee, 2008;Li & Vuono, 2019;Park, 2018), this current study investigated Indonesian university students' perceptions of using audio feedback in the context of teaching large classes. In general, the data from the questionnaire and semistructured interview revealed that audio feedback unavoidably helped students understand the feedback more.
The finding of this study revealed that more than half of the participants (73.4%) had a positive perception of the audio feedback. By listening to the audio, students could learn the feedback given by the lecturers more comprehensively. Besides, the audio feedback was helpful in terms of revising process. The students could revise their works and listen to the feedback simultaneously and replay the audio feedback while revising their works. Also, audio feedback gave students more chances to understand the feedback comprehensively. This finding is in line with the studies conducted by Bourgault et al. (2013), Orlando (2016), and Ryan et al. (2019), who also revealed that the students consider digital records, including audio recordings, to be detailed and thorough. Besides, the finding of this study also supports evidence from Lunt and Curran's (2010) study that the majority of respondents in their study were very pleased with the audio. They found that 85 percent of students agreed that the feedback helped them see what they had missed in their coursework.
Another important piece of information found in this study is that the students could understand what content needed to be added or removed in their writing. This finding is also reported by Solhi and Eǧinli (2020) and Alharbi and Alghammas (2021), who found that audio feedback helped improve students' writing in terms of content and organization. It can thus be suggested that through detailed feedback, students can have lots of input and enhance their writing.
Moreover, in terms of audio quality, the finding indicates that most participants perceived positive experiences with a mean score of 4.38, indicating they acknowledged the audio quality was clear even though the file size was relatively small (around 5 Mb). This finding is contrary to that of Hennessy and Forrester (2014), who stated that the large size of the audio files and their incompatibility with some email systems made students who struggled to access their feedback more confused. If the size is reduced, the quality might be poor. Merry and Orsmond (2008) discovered that students experienced reduced sound quality of audio feedback due to the smaller size of the audio files. In our study, only a few students complained about having noise in the audio, while the rest seemed to enjoy listening to the audio. The Audacity App and good-quality earphones do improve audio quality, which needs to be considered. Having clear audio makes students feel motivated to listen to and follow the feedback.
For the accessibility indicator, most participants mentioned that there were no issues in downloading, accessing, and listening to the audio feedback. Only few students had difficulty accessing the audio due to technical issues such as the incompatible phone. However, Alharbi and Alghammas (2021) discovered a contradicting finding that most students felt that traditional feedback or written feedback is more accessible than audio. It is concerned with the students' preparation, such as downloading the audio. Internet issues might become one of the factors contributing to students' experiences in accessing the audio. Before utilizing the audio feedback, it must be ensured that all students have internet access, and teachers should ensure all of the students can access the audio to avoid such emerging issues.
The fourth indicator concerns students' preference for receiving feedback. Most of them preferred to have audio compared to its written counterpart. Some factors were due to listening to the audio; it was easy to relisten to the feedback and comprehend what the lecturer meant. Besides, detailed feedback through the audio helped the students follow the instructions and recognize what was missing in their assignments. It is consistent with Parkes and Fletcher (2017), who stated that students appreciate audio feedback for its clarity, ease of use, highlighting of areas of strength and weakness in students' assignments, and being personal. Xu (2018) supported it by stating that teachers' audio feedback engaged the students to participate due to its easiness to relisten to the audio. In this study, the data shows that students preferred audio feedback to its traditional counterpart because it involved not only corrections but also suggestions, motivations, and some criticism in which the students felt that their teacher thoroughly read their assignments and cared for them.
Concerning the time allocated to receiving the feedback, the data shows that the participants received the audio on time. It means that recording is less time-consuming than writing the feedback. This finding is aligned with Hennessy and Forrester (2014), saying that audio feedback can be a more time-efficient technique for teachers to deliver timely and high-quality feedback. The teacher can reduce the time to correct the student's work, and the students can receive it on time. Lunt and Curran (2010) said one minute of audio feedback might carry information equivalent to six minutes of written feedback, so this is an investment of time and effort for teachers and students.
In sum, the finding of this study indicates that most of the participants had positive perceptions of the use of audio feedback. This finding is aligned with the results of several studies by Gould and Day (2013), Hennessy and Forrester (2014), Voelkel and Mello (2014), Parkes and Fletcher (2017), and Xu (2018) who discovered that students valued audio feedback, resulting in the establishment of a positive perspective on student towards that type of feedback. Although all of the study participants had never received this type of feedback, the data from the questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and freehand writing demonstrated that they preferred audio feedback. Surprisingly, one of the students expressed her wish that all teachers would utilize audio feedback in their comments. It could be because it is thorough, detailed, personal, and convenient.

CONCLUSION
This study aimed to investigate university students' perceptions of the use of audio feedback, especially in developing countries such as Indonesia. The findings revealed that the students had a positive attitude towards audio feedback, particularly in five aspects: effectiveness of audio feedback, quality of audio, accessibility, preference for audio feedback, and punctuality in receiving audio feedback. This finding adds to a series of results that students perceived the enactment of audio feedback as a positive means to obtain comments from their teacher. The students said that it was their first time getting this type of feedback, and surprisingly, one of them expected that every teacher would also utilize audio feedback. Even though audio feedback has been widely discussed, research on it is still scarce in Indonesia, where English is taught as a foreign language. With the empirical data in this study, it is suggested that teaching practitioners use audio feedback in their teaching and learning process. Its deployment is not complex; the teachers need to install Audacity or other recording software on their laptops and then record their voice. Then, they can send enthusiastic feedback that the students will find memorable, thrilling, and engaging.
The present study has some limitations that should be acknowledged. Further studies need to determine how successful the use of audio feedback is by concentrating on quantitative analysis to assess its statistical significance. A comparison of the two modalities (i.e., audio and written feedback) may also be carried out to highlight considerable disparities between the two methods. In addition, several educational conclusions may be taken from this study. Students who like to learn by audio can improve their comprehension level through audio feedback, which is one of the instructional strategies that may be included in the virtual learning process. It is possible to enhance learning media by incorporating visual aids based on audio feedback. This will allow students who learn best via an audiovisual approach to experience the advantages of this improvement.