KAIZENA: A TOOL FOR INDIVIDUALIZED AUDIO FEEDBACK ON ACADEMIC WRITING

Providing effective feedback through audio technology to promote academic writing has yet to be fully explored in higher education institutions today. This paper reports on an investigation of how the final level foundation students have perceived the impact of Kaizena as a digital audio feedback tool in the context of a higher education institution in Oman named the Middle East College (MEC). The Kaizena platform was more specifically evaluated in terms of its effectiveness as to foundation students' provision of personalized audio feedback concerning their academic writing. The paper adopted an interpretive epistemological stance with quantitative and qualitative inquiries to seek EFL students' perceptions. A set of questionnaires was distributed to 60 students at English foundation levels to collect their satisfaction on the tool in question while a focus group of 6 EFL students taking up an academic writing course were interviewed to elicit their deep analytical responses towards the investigated modality of feedback. Overall, the data-driven results revealed positive responses from the participants, assuring that Kaizena is an effective tool to be used to ultimately enhance their academic writing skills. Implications on the usefulness of the Kaizena and its potential applicability and dissemination in a wider context of HEIs worldwide are discussed.