Grading essays and papers takes a lot of time and effort. Writing comments on the paper for the student to read is time consuming and – let’s face it – stressful for your hand. After an hour of grading, can you even read your writing any more? What to do? Try audio comments for giving feedback.
Using audio comments can not only speed up the process of grading, but it also will add some emotional shading to your comment that might be missed in a written version.
Audio comments can easily be made in Adobe Acrobat Pro. For the best results, use a USB external microphone. Open the student paper in Acrobat Pro, click on Comment > Annotations > Record Audio, then click in the document where you want the comment to appear. (Note: you can drag the comment to another location after recording.) A Sound Recorder dialog box will appear; click the red record icon (PC) or the Record button (Mac), and then speak into the microphone. When you finish recording, click the stop button, and then click OK. A sound Attachment Properties dialog box will appear, allowing you to choose the icon that will be added to the student paper to represent your comment. Click on OK to accept the chosen icon. When you are done, don’t forget to save the file with the attached comments to your hard drive. If you created the assignment in Moodle, you can upload the commented file back into Moodle, or you can email the file to the student author. Contact ITEC if you have questions about any part of this process.