Nihad Ćehić
Holte School is a large mixed Secondary School and Sixth Form in the Lozells area of Birmingham that caters for over 1,100 students. The school is operated by Birmingham City Council and is an inclusive, community school that offers “an exceptional quality of pastoral care.” (Ofsted, 2023).
Holte School were looking for a solution to provide more detailed audio recorded feedback for their students in the Sixth Form and have been working with Vibbl since the 2023/2024 academic year.
Graham Edwards, Associate AHT Quality of Education & Head of Department said: “We began with piloting Vibbl in my English department, primarily to use with our sixth formers.
“We had previously been giving detailed feedback on essays and assignments and using Vibbl we have been able to give the same quality of feedback in 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes.
“It took a little bit of time to get used to using the platform and to set up, but the support from Vibbl was fantastic. Once we got going it has been transformational for us.
“Our students have responded really well to receiving feedback in this way and have commented on how much they like the detail received from the audio recorded feedback we are sending.”
The use of Vibbl has enabled the department to send high quality feedback that is specific and meaningful on long extended pieces of writing. Students send the essays in to the teacher and the teacher then uploads a Microsoft Word document into Vibbl speaking paragraph by paragraph on ways in which the student can take their writing to the next level.
Graham Edwards said: “Following our successful pilot in the English Department, we are now trying to embed Vibbl in other departments in the school.
“We are currently rolling it out in the Social Sciences department and are looking at other departments like Art, PE and MFL where we feel there will be a natural fit for the technology.
After using Vibbl, I cant see myself ever going back to written marking again for feedback on KS5 coursework.”
