Research led by Keele University Careers and Employability Team has found that the use of screencasting to give feedback on CVs increases student understanding, is perceived as more personal, and promotes deeper learning compared to written feedback.

The Careers and Employability Team at Keele continue to innovate and try out new approaches to improve the service offered to students and graduates. In this spirit the researchers wanted to explore a different and potentially more effective method of delivering feedback as an alternative to traditional written feedback.

Ben Simkins, Careers Consultant at Keele University, led the research with Karen Coney, previously a member of the Keele Careers Team who now works at Liverpool John Moores University. Ben explains:

“Screencasting is used in an academic context to provide formative and summative feedback and has been associated with numerous potential benefits. However, the use of screencasting has not previously been researched in a careers and employability context. We wanted to explore using screencasting in giving feedback on CVs, and whether this helped improve students’ understanding.”

The study focused on CV feedback. Most if not all students will require a CV to compete for graduate opportunities including employment and post-graduate study. Understanding how to articulate the skills, attributes, and experience gained through their programme of study and other aspects of their overall experience in the form of a high quality CV can be a key component of a student’s employability. Access to personalised feedback from a Careers and Employability professional can significantly contribute to a student’s understanding of how to accomplish this.

The research has now been published in the NICEC Journal and key benefits suggest:

• screencasting is more efficient in terms of time taken to produce the feedback
• screencasting increased student/graduate understanding of feedback given
• screencasting was perceived as being more personal
• screencasting promoted deeper learning in comparison to written feedback.

Ben Simkins commented:

“Practitioner led research is something that I am passionate about as it can contribute, in a very practical way, to potential improvements and alternative methods in our practice. To now see this research published gives me a real sense of achievement.”

Terry Dray, Associate Director for Employability and Employer Engagement at Keele University commented:

“This scholarly work augments the professional practice of careers professionals in universities and enhances the student experience. It shows that students find screencasting a preferred method of receiving feedback as it is more personal and leads to a deeper level of understanding than other methods of feedback. It illustrates well how committed the Keele Careers and Employability Team are to continuous improvement.”

Find out more about the Keele Careers and Employability Team.