e-assessment (f)or learning

Whether or not you’re coming to our seminar ‘Self-assessment: stratgies and software to stimuate learning’ on 11th June, there are lots of things worthy of discussion.

Many of the speakers have provided links that you might like to look at:

Gwyneth Hughes on Ipsative Assessment

Tony Gardner-Medwin on Certainty-based Marking and CBM in Moodle

Peerwise (Paul Denny is in New Zealand so we will be showing a video) and a JISC-funded project that is evaluating the use of Peerwise at Edinburgh University.

Jon Rosewell on ‘Assessing with confidence’

And, from Phil Butcher et al at the Open University, ‘eAssessment at the Open University with open source software.’

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I’m pleased to hear that OCR have apologised for errors in adding up marks for GCSE and A-level papers last year. It doesn’t seem right that the whistleblower remains suspended, but I don’t know the details so perhaps I shouldn’t comment.

When I first heard about this latest case of human error in exam marking, I was amazed that we are still reliant on human arithmetic (though I know that addition of scores is meant to be checked by someone else – and that payment for this is included in the payment of GCSE and A-level markers). However I suppose that if markers were required to enter their scores into a computerised system of some sort (to enable the computer to check the arithmetic, or to do the arithmetic in the first instance) there would still be transcription errors – and it would take time and so slow down the marking process.

The important point is that, however much their work is checked and however much they are encouraged not to make mistakes and/or punished for making them (according to The Guardian, some examiners have had their contracts terminated), human markers are fallible. They are fallible when marking, they are fallible when adding scores. I’m a human, I make mistakes. The sooner we are honest with ourselves and admit that, the better.

I have a huge amount of work to do, yet this afternoon I have found myself enthralled in a number of coincidental conversations about the role of ‘incentives’ in getting students to engage with assessment, or dare I say, with learning.

With permission, I am copying  parts of Phil Langton’s latest message:

I’m coming rapidly to the conclusion that the mistake we make is to fail to put ourselves in the students’ shoes.  We ask lots of questions and expect that by weight of numbers of sheer dumb luck the  students will begin to see the world as we do.

Wrong! (more…)

Building on work that others have done, in particular my colleagues Joy Manners and John Bolton in the OU Department of Physical Sciences, we are encouraging a move across the Science Faculty to what we are calling ‘formative thresholded assessment’. (more…)