Monthly Archives: September 2010

Making independent learners

The first keynote at the Physics Higher Education Conference was given by Professor Derek Raine of Leicester University, who is perhaps best known for using problem based learning to teach physics and interdisciplinary science. Thinking about Derek’s work leads me to … Continue reading

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Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation

I’m now home and conferenced out (not helped by problems on the East Coast Main Line on Friday evening). The Physics Higher Education Conference (PHEC) (in Glasgow this year) was considerably better than when I first attended the event. Some … Continue reading

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Good posters at ALT-C

I was bowled over by two posters at ALT-C: Matt Haigh’s ‘Changing the way we see test-items in a computer-based environment: screen design and question difficulty’ (session 096)and Silvester Draaijer’s ‘Design of a question design support tool’ (session 148). Both … Continue reading

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Counting counts but syntax sucks

The quote I’ve used as the title of this post has been attributed to the late Professor Roger Needham at the University of Cambridge. I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for two months and am only now mentioning our work with … Continue reading

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Dependability – the one-handed clock

This is  my final post relating directly to the Earli/Northumbria Assessment Conference. Well that’s a relief I hear you say. It was an amazing conference for me, coming at just the right time in my thinking about broader issues in … Continue reading

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Do we know what we mean by ‘quality’ in e-assessment?

This was the topic of my roundtable at the Earli/Northumbria Assessment Conference and I am very grateful to the 10 people who attended one of the two wonderful discussions we had on the topic. The obvious answer is that, no, … Continue reading

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Why don’t the marks go up?

Given tha amount of work that we put into formative assessment, why don’t students do better in summative assessment? This was one of the recurring themes at the EARLI/Northumbria Assessment Conference, first raised in Liz McDowell’s keynote. Liz wondered if … Continue reading

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Is less more? The Goldilocks of assessment

After my tirade in one of the EARLI/Northumbria Assessment Conference sessions about the true meaning of ‘feedback’  (see the second posting in this Blog, 30th July 2010) here I go again, doing exactly what I mutter at other people for doing. Just … Continue reading

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Continuous or terminal assessment?

I’m a bit slow on the uptake. I’ve now moved on from the EARLI/Northumbria Assessment Conference in Northumberland to ALT-C 2010 in Nottingham, with a day of walking, a day of writing and a day of interviewing in between. Before my thinking gets … Continue reading

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Assessing achievement, not ‘being alive’

I’m at the EARLI/Northumbria Assessment Conference at the Slaley Hall Hotel in Northumberland (UK). Yesterday Royce Sadler got the conference off to a fine start with a challenging Keynote ‘Close-range assessment practices with high yield prospects’. ‘Close-range’ refers to things … Continue reading

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