e-assessment (f)or learning

The title of this post is the title of a paper I have just read. It was written in – wait for it – 1938. It’s a delightful little paper, but its findings are shocking. I came across it whilst valiently trying to find good reasons for using multiple-choice questions (which, you will remember, are not my favourite type of question). However, it turns out that multiple-choice (‘objective’) questions were first used because of the lack of objectivity of human-marked essay-type questions. (more…)

Whether you love or hate deadlines probably depends on whether you are currently struggling to meet one. (more…)

Another JISC-funded project (at the OU Department of Languages and the University of Manchester) looking at student use of feedback. There is more at http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/efep/

The interesting things about this project are (1) that both written and oral feedback will be analysed and (2) the focus on the use of feedback and on staff and student perceptions, as well as on the quality of the feedback itself. I await further findings from this project with considerable interest.

There is an extremely interesting post and discussion here : http://www.nadinemuller.org.uk/blog/e-musings/

Basically, students don’t like the idea of posts to blogs or discussion forums being assessed. They feel they have to be careful how they write (because the work is assessed) in a way that doesn’t seem natural in the normal ‘informal’ setting of a blog or forum.

Being more explicit about what you are assessing might help.

The other thing that was discussed at yesterday’s ‘Analysing feedback’ session at the JISC online conference ‘Innovating e-Learning: shaping the future’ was the role of praise in feedback. (more…)

I’m participating in the ‘activity week’ of the JISC online conference ‘Innovating e-Learning: shaping the future’ and yesterday I caught just 30 minutes of an incredibly interesting session on ‘Analysing feedback’. I have just watched the recording of the rest of it, but wish I’d been able to participate fully. (more…)

Another day, another webinar. Today’s was a very useful JISC webinar from the University of Glamorgan on their evaluation of ‘Assessment Diaries’ and Grademark.

In a sense, we’ve had assessment diaries stitched up for some time at the OU, because all assessment deadlines are predetermined and advertised in various places, including Moodle. We also have our own online eTMA system (system for the electronic submission, marking and return of tutor-marked assignments). Having said that, I liked the look of Grademark.

We have an expectation that TMAs that are submitted on time should be marked, commented on and returned within 10 working days, but we don’t publicise ‘feedback dates’ per se. So the idea of ‘feedback parties’ (where students apparently await the return of their assignments at the specified time, chatting on Facebook, and then celebrate together or commiserate with each other) was new. I was also interested to learn that students don’t mind if their feedback is late, provided they have been warned. That experience echoes my own, though I would query whether late-delivered feedback is perhaps sometimes too late to be useful (even if students say they don’t mind).

There’s a recording of the webinar at http://bit.ly/jiscelopenwebinars.

So what is funnelled assessment? A chance to insert an image into what is becoming a rather boring blog? Maybe! But there is a serious idea here. If we are moving towards programme-focused assessment whilst keeping the assessment itself at the level of the module, the idea of ‘capstone’ assessment (in the sense of putting important assessment in the final module studied, frequently a project module) is not new.

Funnelled assessment is a similar concept – if there are important modules in your qualification, especially if these modules are compulsory (so students are ‘funnelled’ through them) then these modules become key assessment points.

If funnelled assessment takes off, remember that you first heard about it here!

Yesterday was a busy day! After the STACK webinar I jumped in my car and drove to Milton Keynes to speak at an OU meeting about assessment, this run for and by the Childhood, Youth and Education Programme. This was somewhat nerve-wracking – these guys are experts in things educational.

For me, the highlight of the day was listening to the guest speaker, Graham Gibbs, whose work I am sure that most people reading this Blog will know. I worked with Graham on the FAST Project (well that might be stretching a point a bit – I was a very junior player) and it was lovely to see him again. Graham’s title was ‘How assessment supports student learning, how assessment is changing in UK universities and how assessment at the OU might change.’ Much of what he said was familiar, but that doesn’t make it any less important. If we’d all heard it before and acted on it, perhaps we wouldn’t still have an ‘assessment problem’.

I absolutely agree with some of the things Graham suggested, in particular that we should use more oral feedback and plan a progression of assessment across modules and programmes.  In the OU context, I am still uneasy about the use of  unmarked assignments. When we talk about formative thresholded assessment in the Science Faculty, we are still giving marks as an indicator of progress. However I do agree that it might be a good idea to separate the formative and the summative and, in particular, to alter our culture so that students can submit early drafts of projects for (formative) feedback before they are resubmitted for (summative) marks.

At 7am yesterday I was sitting at my computer, head-set on, for the Transforming Assessment webinar about STACK, led by Chris Sangwin in Birmingham, via Australia…(hence the early start).

STACK will be released in December as a Moodle question type, but it has been around for a while. STACK (System for Teaching and Assessment using a Computer-algebra Kernel) is an eAssessment system for mathematics and related subjects, with computer algebra (Maxima) at its heart. For those of us at the OU wanting to increase the use of good eAssessment in maths and physics, we have been waiting a long time for this moment – and I’m sure the same is true elsewhere. Chris commented yesterday that computer algebra is essential (and that regular expressions are wholly inadequate) for this sort of assessment. I’m not sure I’d go quite that far, but we have been bashing our head on a brickwall somewhat, having to think of every way students might legitmately write an expression. 

Aside of the advantage that computer algebra brings,  STACK appears to be a very well thought out system and I am looking forward to using it. Mind you, I think  I will be on a steep learning curve as I start writing questions in the coming months.

There is a recording of yesterday’s webinar at http://bit.ly/TA7N2012