See also: Transforming Assessment and Feedback
See also Assess (as a process) and assessment and feedback (how the Curriculum Design and Delivery projects have addressed the challenges of making assessment and feedback more effective).
Nearly all projects included elements of assessment and feedback as part of their approaches to enhance the learning experience. Whilst some use specific assessment tools such as Turnitin (Making the New Diploma a Success, INTEGRATE) most used a wide range of technologies not specifically designed as assessment tools.
The use of audio feedback in the form of podcasts and voice boards to provide feedback proved to be a very efficient and effective method used by some projects (COWL, Duckling).
Supporting reflection on feedback
MAC were focused on feedback and assessment and developed the ‘e-reflect’ process which utilised blogging facilities in the VLE for student reflection on tutor feedback, a Google-based form for a student questionnaire and linked to central student records, and an emailed pdf response to students. The project created a SUM (service usage model) which provides an overview and technical description of the e-reflect process. The project team are revising this model to create a more sustainable and flexible self-authoring open-source version aimed to support improved sustainability at Westminster and wider applicability across institutions and subject areas.
The ESCAPE project utilised a wide range of technologies across a range of courses to provide timely assessment for learning including video capture of lectures which are then made available through the institutional VLE, flipcam recordings of lab work, wikis and an in-house Excel-based programme call WATS (weekly assessed tutorial sheets) which is a webform that students submit, it is marked with feedback and then creates a league table.
Assignment Handling
Some Delivery projects used technologies to support assignment handling to make assessment activities more efficient for both staff and students. CASCADE used Moodle for assignment handling and also to support assessment activities. ESCAPE and eBiolabs used Excel for online submissions and automatic marking and eBiolabs highlighted a few issues around basic computer literacies of students:
‘Although we had a few complaints about requiring students to use Excel pro-formas, discussions with the students revealed that their difficulties were more with basic computer literacy problems such as saving and finding files.’
‘Students preferred to use their own computers to complete the pro-formas even when they did not have a copy of Excel. The most frequent cause of problems was students uploading their work in an incorrect file format.’ (eBiolabs)
Peer review and feedback
Several projects investigated peer review and feedback (Atelier-D, COWL, Duckling, eBiolabs, ESCAPE, ISCC, Making the New Diploma a success) and this proved particularly popular with remote students, as well as supporting ecomomies of scale with large cohorts and staff time efficiencies.
‘The COWL Project offered a small taster of the support available and the structured peer writing support activity during the COWL Economics trials encouraged these students to seek additional individualised writing support. As a result of the COWL Project, therefore, there was a ten-fold increase in the number of level one Economics students formally choosing to seek help with their writing.’(COWL)
‘The Education students preferred being assessed through interactive v-tivities via the Voice Board than through portfolio tasks individually. They liked the fact that they were able to receive more constructive feedback from the e-moderators and peers as opposed to getting limited feedback on the portfolio tasks from the tutor only which they found “didn’t give you too much motivation”. Students also considered that the v-tivities generated more discussion around the tasks with peers, and enabled them to do more readings recommended by peers. On the whole, students appreciated the interactive element of the v-tivities and were happy about their formative assessment being done this way.’ (Duckling)
Summary of tools used by the projects
Plagiarism detection
Integrative Technologies Project used Turnitin for plagiarism detection and a scanner to support multiple choice questionnaires (MCQs) exams.
Further Resources
More information about the technologies used for assessment purposes in the Delivery programme is available from this blog post from CETIS. See also CETIS resources on assessment
Tagged resources:
Assess or Assessment
Assignment Handling
Feedback
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