Tel Tales

Adventures in Technology Enhanced Learning @ UoP

Tag: internal (Page 13 of 21)

coloured labels with different areas covered in our workshops

TEL Training Sessions – Update

April 29, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Can’t spare 2 hours (let alone 3 hours) to attend TEL Training sessions, but would like to . . . . . well you can now!  

We’ve reviewed our sessions and have been able to reduce the running times of our longest sessions to make them easier to fit into the already busy working day. We’d like as many of you as possible to be able to attend our sessions, so in reducing the running times (in some cases by 50%) by keeping content relevant but concise, we hope more of you will be able to join our sessions in the future.

How do I find more information on TEL Training Sessions?

You’ll find our calendar with all our new times and full description on the sessions we run by going to the Department of Curriculum and Quality Enhancement (DCQE) website and clicking on the TEL Training Calendar.

Where else can I book onto the sessions?

The calendar on our blog pages also indicates the training sessions with a dot underneath the date, just click on the dot and the session information will appear. You can also book yourself onto a session here; just click the button at the bottom. Feel free to switch through the months to see what training sessions are coming up.

Who are your training sessions for?

Primarily, the workshops are for lecturers and PHD Students, but they can be adapted for professional service members of staff too. If you’re not available at the times of our training events, or if the programme does not cover a specific area you’re interested in, we can offer a 1-2-1 session tailored to your needs. In addition, if there’s a group of people in your department who would like a session to update their knowledge in a certain area, we can also arrange that.  We have a meeting room here in Mercantile House, but we can always come to you. To arrange these bespoke sessions, firstly complete the Bespoke Training Request form, click here give us a brief outline into which areas you’d like the training to cover and for how many people, someone will then contact you to discuss your requirements.

So if you’ll looking to embark on a project involving technology, or if you would simply like some support or advice on how to use the various elearning tools available at the University, the TEL team are here to help.

We look forward to welcoming you at one of our training events in the near future.

 

Happy 2 years to us!

April 18, 2019 / / 0 Comments

It’s Tel Tales birthday today and we’re celebrating 2 years of blogging. 2 years – that’s a big achievement for us, in the past blogging was never our forte as a team – but this time, with Tel Tales, we’ve stuck to it – so what have we learnt in the last 2 years as a group of novice bloggers and how has this time been different from our previous attempt?

Raising our profile

In early 2016, we were thinking of ways to raise our profile within the University. We are a long standing central service, but we offer much more than Moodle support, as a bunch of talented individuals with an array of experience and expertise, we felt this was often unknown and we also weren’t too good at voicing our achievements.

Building a blog site seemed like the perfect platform where as a team, we could all contribute and write posts journalling our adventures in technology and education.

Reservations

As a team we had reservations, we had quite a few failed blog attempts in the past and this had knocked our confidence, which I talked about in my first blog post Why Blog? For some members of the team, blogging came naturally and were able to write posts with ease. For others writing a post for all to read was quite a scary concept and putting pen to paper was difficult. As this was a team blog and we wanted everyone to feel comfortable and happy to post, we knew that the project would need planning, organisation, ongoing management and time to be a success.

Tips for setting up a team blog

Here are some of our tips for starting a team blog:

  • Communicate the goals and focus of the team blog – from the offset, as a team, we discussed what we would like to include in our blog site, things such as events we’d attended, projects that we were working on, useful information about the technologies people in the University were using, and topical news that had interested us.
  • Develop a team blog style guide and author guidelines – we put together some guidelines as to the style of the posts i.e. sizing of headers, images, copyright, referencing etc so that the posts were consistent although written by multiple people.
  • Choose an appropriate team blog tool – we choose WordPress as our blogging tool and created each member of the team their own user account so they had ownership of their own posts.
  • Have team editors/proofreaders – we delegated the proofreading and editing of the posts to 3 members of the team – so all posts after written in draft were checked by them before going live.
  • Create an editorial/blog post calendar – we created a calendar so that we could organise and schedule when posts were going live and keep an ongoing spreadsheet of all posts to keep track of what stage they were at.
  • Offer collaboration and communication tools to contributors – all members of the team have access to Slack where we can discuss the blog posts and Google Drive where we structure and manage all the posts. Everything is clearly structured in folders and everyone has access to everything.
  • Provide feedback to contributors – feedback regarding the blog site as a whole and feedback regarding posts are either discussed on Slack or directly to the contributor.
  • Recruit guest bloggers – we have had several members of staff from other departments contribute to the site which has been great in networking with other departments.
  • Repurpose content without losing quality – when times have been a little quiet we have been able to repurpose content that is topical – so we are never short of finding content for our site.
  • Remain flexible – I think flexibility is key to running a team blog site, nothing is set in stone, so we are able to accommodate for any obstacles that we’ve come up against over the last 2 years.

Build it and they will come

We did build it and they did come, but slowly. It’s easy to assume with blogging that once you’ve built the site then that’s it, ta-dah job done. We’ve learnt however that this isn’t the case and we’ve had to be patient and continue to be, building an audience doesn’t happen overnight.

What’s in store for the next 2 years

It’s uncertain where Tel Tales will reside in the future, we may become part of the University of Portsmouth website, however we still hope to have a presence in one shape or form. We continue to raise our profile in other forms of media, Tom L has created some Podcasts on Tel Tales, so if you haven’t listened to those yet then check them out. Tom is also looking at our YouTube channel and will be providing some new videos on there. Shaun is working on our Instagram account, so make sure to follow us if you’re a keen Instagrammer.

I’m immensely proud of the team and everyone that has contributed to the site, especially those that have found it difficult to write for an online environment but have still given it a go! Big thanks to Mandy who’s our team organiser and keeps us informed of who’s doing what and to Stephen, Alana and Tom C for being our team proofreaders, Tom L and Shaun our social media bods and for Will and Mike for all their help behind the scenes with the ‘techy stuff’ and thank you to everyone in the team that has contributed to Tel Tales. Thanks to all our followers too – we hope you enjoy reading our posts!! Cheers everyone!

Wishing you all a very ‘Happy Easter’ from the TEL team.

Happy Easter

If you would like to feature as a guest blogger on Tel Tales then please get in touch and we can discuss ideas with you 🙂

Image credits:
https://pixabay.com/images/id-72160/
http://www.quotesvalley.com/quotes/failure/page/443/
https://pixabay.com/images/id-2406452/

Lady wearing a blue top looking out of a virtual reality headset

Natalie_4.0

April 17, 2019 / / 1 Comment

Software developers and user interface designers often use storytelling techniques to help them make sense of different features of their system and to help them communicate and explain their work to others. Software developers, for example, write “user stories”: descriptions of system features written from the perspective of an end user of the system. User interface designers often develop “personas” – a written description of a fictional character who represents a particular type of end user.

Jisc, in trying to understand what Education 4.0 might mean, have adopted a similar approach. They have created a fictional character, called Natalie_4.0, who represents a student taking a university course in geography in October 2029. What might a typical study day look like for Natalie_4.0? What opportunities will technology open up for her? By writing a story – “A day in the life of Natalie_4.0” – we can try to get a feel for what the future of educational might be like. Our story would not say that is is how education will turn out; but it can say how education might turn out.    

The twist here is that Jisc have written Natalie’s story not in the form of a written story, as is usual in the software development and UI world, but in the form of a virtual reality experience. I checked out the Natalie_4.0 VR experience at the recent Digifest conference. So – what was it like?

Well, the first thing to say is that the VR technology itself is improving at a rapid rate. Increasing numbers of VR content developers are entering the market and the hardware is getting cheaper and better. The Natalie_4.0 VR experience itself builds on this foundation: it is immersive, and while you are sharing Natalie’s day it is easy to imagine how VR technology could have real educational benefits. (Personally, I don’t believe that those benefits extend to all subject areas. Indeed, in many cases I believe the introduction of VR would be detrimental – it would be a gimmick. Nevertheless, in some niche areas I can see how VR could deliver tremendous benefits.)   

But what about the story itself? Does Natalie_4.0 provide a reasonable guess as to what the student of 2029 might experience? Well, of course we won’t know definitively for another ten years. But for what it’s worth I believe that some guesses will likely prove accurate; others won’t.

The influence of AI on daily life is one aspect of Natalie_4.0 that will, I think, come to pass. The story suggests that Natalie will have access to a personal AI that will help her throughout her day – in her learning as well as in her everyday life. But other aspects of the story seemed to me less convincing. For example, Natalie’s AI organises a live feedback session with her (human) tutor. Well, it will be terrific if turns out that every student has access to a personal tutor; if every student can sit down with a teacher and have a one-on-one session to discuss a piece of work. But how is such a thing possible in a mass education system? Most universities can’t offer that luxury now – why should that change in the future? (It might be that Jisc have underestimated the rate of progress of artificial intelligence; perhaps Natalie’s personal AI will be able to play the role of tutor as well as general assistant?)  

Another AI-related thought struck me as I sat through Natalie_4.0. In the feedback session mentioned above, the tutor uses some gee-whiz technology to provide feedback on … a written essay. Well, technology has already reached the stage where an AI can generate reasonable text in a variety of styles; in ten years time I’m sure Natalie would be able to get an AI system to write an essay for her. (Who knows. Perhaps AI systems will be able to mark essays. Why not cut out the middle-man and have an AI write an essay and a different AI mark it! All untouched by human hands!) In such a world, authentic forms of assessment will become crucial: tutors will need to assess skills that are uniquely human – judgement, creativity, leadership, teamwork, communication. That is the main thing I took from the Natalie_4.0 experience.

Image credits: Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Exam Analytics Dashboard

Online Exams in Moodle

April 5, 2019 / / 0 Comments

We’ll start to see a lot of online Moodle exams from Monday 29th April.

At this time of year a lot of time is dedicated to preparing for the formal exam weeks to begin. Academics and Online Course Developers are creating questions and testing exam quizzes. The TEL team are testing the Moodle infrastructure and exam reporting, and working with IS to ensure we have enough server resources at key times during the exam period. This year the formal examination weeks will run from Monday 13th May 2019 through to Friday 7th June 2019. It’s worth making a note in your diary about these dates but as I’ll highlight in this blog post, you’ll probably want to set these dates to start from Monday 29th April.

What constitutes an online Moodle exam?

We encourage staff to tag Moodle-based exams with the ‘exam-official’ tag and set appropriate dates. This information, along with data provided by Online Courses Developers, helps us build a picture of the when exams are happening. It means we can spot ‘pinch points’, times where we expect a lot of concurrent exam attempts, which could represent a need for more server resources to be made available. In short if you don’t tag your assessments we’ll find it difficult to guarantee a seamless exam experience for your students.

Tagging also means you can run your online exams in one of our supported secure exam browser environments (Safe Exam Browser, FAQs available here or Chromebooks in secure exam mode). This means students can’t easily access other websites during their exam and makes invigilation a lot easier.

How many online exam attempts were there last year?

During the official exam period last year (13.05.2018–07.06.2018) there were 5426 exams attempts that we all helped support. However, this figure isn’t the full picture. In the two week preceding the exam period 2737 official online exam attempts took place. That’s quite a staggering number of exam attempts happening outside of the time-frame that staff are focussed on supporting and something we should all be mindful of this year. Monday April 29th is the start date for your diaries.

Exams change freeze

IS and TEL enforce a number of Moodle change freezes throughout the academic year. These are periods when no updates can be made to Moodle. We have one in place during the exam period to ensure changes don’t inadvertently interrupt exams. The exam change freeze this year will run from Monday 29th April through to Friday 7th June (inclusive).

How do we monitor exams are going well?

The TEL team gather data from a number of sources to help monitor what’s happening through the exam period. We combine it into a real-time dashboard of where exams are happening and how Moodle is performing. You can see a picture below from last year.

Exam Analytics Dashboard

We rely on support from a number of sources to produce this dashboard. Lead Online Course Developers have their finger on the pulse of when exams will happen and any last minute amendments. In the very near future we’ll be asking again for your help to populate a spreadsheet with the exams you know about. We combine this information with data from student records, which is thorough but lacks local knowledge. We also use Google Analytics, Moodle database and server infrastructure reporting to keep an eye on how our systems our performing. This combined data is extremely useful at spotting pinch points and monitoring how things are running but it’s not as effective as people in faculties such as exam invigilators and online course developers ensuring all is running well and reporting to elearn@port.ac.uk any issues that are encountered.

A new exam theme for Moodle

It’s worth mentioning at this point that we’re close to final testing of an updated version of the Moodle exam theme. This is a stripped down version of our theme intended for use in exams. We’ll provide more information on this in the next few weeks. It will look very similar to the existing exam theme but will be a bit closer to our regular theme in terms of question layout and styles.

Thank You

We just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone involved in making sure the exam period goes well. It’s very much a big team effort and all the work we put in ensures students get as stress-free an experience as possible. I’m sure they appreciate it, I know that the team in TEL certainly do.

If you have any questions about online exams, please get in touch at elearn@port.ac.uk

 

Thank You Image

Image credits: Photo by Lip on Unsplash

JISC Digifest 2019 banner

Digifest 2019

March 29, 2019 / / 1 Comment

Jisc’s Digifest is my favourite educational technology conference. Spread over two days at Birmingham’s International Conference Centre it’s an ideal opportunity to meet practitioners from other institutions and this can be nearly as useful as the set programme of talks and presentations themselves. This year the focus was on practical ideas that can be taken back to the classroom or lecture theatre. To this end, I attended sessions on the use of video.

The first session, “How digital video innovates pedagogical methods”, was run by learning technologists from Havant and Southdowns College and looked at how staff and students have used video for both formative and summative assessment. Together, the technologists have worked on around 200 videos, some produced by the students themselves. It was clear that the use of video has had a significant impact on teaching and learning at the College. While claims about improved student attainment and retention lacked supporting data, feedback from both staff and students did indicate improvement in student engagement and achievement.

The importance of video in teaching and learning was also the theme of a presentation by Dominik Lukes’  (Learning Technologist, University of Oxford). In his presentation, titled “How YouTube started a revolution in learning and nobody noticed”, Dominik argued that the role of video in teaching and learning can only expand and provided this example of the power of video as a learning tool. Whilst I’m not entirely convinced by the claim that ‘video is the future’, both Dominik’s and the Havant College presentations did illustrate the usefulness and power of video if used properly. Both presentations also highlighted the ease of using YouTube as the delivery platform especially given the automatic subtitles function. It would be interesting to find out more about what students think of video as a learning tool and the extent to which benefits outweigh costs (in terms of time primarily) but from personal experience, I think a lot more use could be made of YouTube in teaching and learning.

Of the panel discussions I sat in on, the most interesting was “Listening to teachers: implications for education and digital“ The discussion was based on a piece of research by anthropologist Donna Lanclos and others the findings of which can be downloaded here. The research consisted of interviewing teachers in both the HE and FE sector with the aim “to uncover what next generation digital learning environments might look like”. Their report also came up with a series of recommendations which are well worth reading.

I was particularly interested in how terminology was being used. Many years ago when I was a student we went to lectures delivered by lecturers, in this discussion it was about “teachers” facilitating and delivering learning. This change in emphasis – teaching rather than lecturing – is something, I assume, that will become more ubiquitous given the introduction of the TEF in 2017. A number of thought provoking issues came out of the discussion not necessarily related directly to technology. For example, to provide effective holistic support to students takes time, which is one resource most staff are short of. This issue links nicely to a presentation I saw by Bolton College on the use of chatbots. But more on that in my next blog along with a look at Snatchbot!

 

A diagram showing the four stages of Industrial Revolution

Education 4.0

March 18, 2019 / / 0 Comments

On 5 February a group of us met with representatives from Jisc. The main focus of the meeting was to discuss the Jisc Digital Insights service (which allows institutions to better understand the digital experience of staff and students) and the Jisc Discoverer service (which allows staff and students to reflect on their digital capability and, where necessary, access relevant support material). Future blog posts will talk more about how to access these services. In this post, I’d like to reflect briefly on a comment made during the meeting by Stuart Masters, Jisc’s Chief Technology Officer. Steve mentioned that one important focus for him, and for Jisc as an organisation, is to understand what “Education 4.0” might look like.    

You will probably have heard of the phrase “Industry 4.0” – or the closely related phrase “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. This idea refers to a gathering of emerging technologies – AI, biotechnology, cloud computing, internet of things, nanotechnology, quantum computing, robotics, 3D printing, 5G wireless – that blur the distinction between the physical, digital and biological. (For reference, the First Industrial Revolution occurred in the 18th/19th centuries and involved the development of the iron and textile industries, plus steam power; society began to shift from rural to urban, agrarian to industrial. The Second Industrial Revolution is often dated 1870–1914, and saw the creation of new industries – oil, steel, electricity – and the rise of mass production. The Third Industrial Revolution – the change from analog to digital devices – began in the 1980s and we are still living through its consequences.) Some of you, no doubt, will feel there is an element of hype to the phrase “Industry 4.0”; after all, how many times has “the next big thing” turned out to be an unusable piece of kit that people use briefly then throw away once the novelty has worn off? This time, though, there really are indications that this fusion of new technological developments – the Fourth Industrial Revolution – will alter society and the world of work.

If that is the case, how should universities respond? Jisc’s suggestion is that, in order to prepare students for a world transformed by Industry 4.0, we need to be thinking about Education 4.0. That’s fine – but what should Education 4.0 look like?

In a recent blog post on this subject, Sarah Davies of Jisc looked at some tentative steps towards Education 4.0 being taken by institutions. Ensuring that students have strong digital capabilities will of course be important (and, as mentioned above, a future post will discuss work taking place here at Portsmouth in this area) but Sarah also mentioned the importance of:

  • rethinking staff and student roles;
  • reimagining learning environments;
  • giving students the opportunity to create and communicate knowledge; and
  • focusing on student wellbeing.

These are all topics that we might well want to consider in Education 4.0, but Sarah also posts a link to a presentation by Martin Hamilton (Jisc’s resident futurist) to the Education Select Committee Inquiry on Industry 4.0. In that presentation, Martin pointed out that 33% of Key Stage Two pupils fail to meet expected standards of literacy and numeracy; 66% of secondary schools have inadequate digital infrastructure. Delivering Education 4.0 will be made even harder if we can’t even get the basics right.

It’s an interesting question, though. What do you think Education 4.0 should look like?  

Feature image title: Industry_4.0.png by Christoph Roser is licensed under CC BY2.0

 

Moodle Baseline Screenshot

Moodle Baseline Launch

March 8, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Technology Enhanced Learning, Academic Development and DSAA are proud to announce the launch of the Moodle Baseline. The Moodle Baseline is a template and set of best practice advice for Moodle module pages. The release is the culmination of a six month feedback exercise with staff from all faculties along with a pilot with students on Nursing degree programmes.

The Moodle Baseline template features five tabs: welcome, module overview, learning outcomes, reading lists (to launch in the next few weeks) and assessments. Some of these tabs will be automatically populated with data after July 14th in time for the start of the new academic year. The Baseline template will be added automatically when modules are rolled-over or created.

The Moodle Baseline addresses repeated student feedback for more consistency in the layout and content of Moodle modules and makes it easier for students to find key information and assessments.

We hope students and staff find the Moodle Baseline to be a useful tool. Help and guidance information can be found on the following dedicated website. If you have any questions please contact your local Online Course Developers or elearn@port.ac.uk.

Students in a study room, one student looking a laptop laughing

Guest Blogger: Adrian Sharkey – Digital Capability Discovery Tool

March 4, 2019 / / 0 Comments

The Digital Capability Discovery Tool is an empowering first step for students and staff to self-assess their digital capabilities and to identify current strengths and areas of development.

What is Digital Capability? 

DIgital capabilities are defined by Jisc as ‘those that fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society’. Digital capabilities are more important than ever: they are essential requirements for employability in a digital economy.

According to Jisc’s Digital experience insights survey 2018, only 41% of UK students felt that their course prepared them for the digital workplace. Everyone should be looking to continuously develop these skills and reflect on their own digital capability.

Using the Digital Capability Discovery Tool

Staff and students are encouraged to use the Discovery Tool to self-assess their digital capabilities. For staff, the tool could potentially be used to inform the PDR process. For students, there would be benefit to discussing the results in personal tutoring sessions.

When you log into the Discovery Tool for the first time you will be asked about your role at the University – there are different question sets for new students, current students, teaching staff, and library and learning support staff. It may be that the options don’t fit your role exactly – just choose the nearest match.

Upon completing the questionnaire you will receive a confidential, personalised report showing your results in each area of digital capability and with links to high-quality, tailored resources.

All responses are confidential, so tutors and managers do not have access to them. The University does, however, have access to aggregated, anonymised data – which will help us identify gaps in our digital learning support and improve our provision for both students and staff. This is yet another reason that everyone – staff and students – are encouraged to complete the survey!

Logging on and further support

IS and DCQE provide sessions for staff to find out about digital capabilities in general, and about the Discovery Tool and how to use it. In these sessions we also discuss how to use the Tool with students and colleagues.

For further information, and to access the Tool, go to digitalcapability.port.ac.uk

Guest Blogger: Julian Ingle – Writing Retreats Take Off

February 20, 2019 / / 0 Comments

“What do you do, sit around writing poetry and novels?” When I say I’m running a writing retreat, most people assume it’s a kind of self-expression fest, paid for by the University. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I’m in my sixth month here as Deputy Head of ASK, enjoying the new role. In my previous job at Queen Mary, UoL, I’d run writing retreats for staff and PhD students on a regular basis. This was something I wanted to initiate here at Portsmouth. I’m pleased to say that I’ve just finished running my fourth writing retreat at the University. Hopefully this marks the beginning of regular retreats at Portsmouth and they’ll become part of the fabric.

These retreats are urban rather than residential – in other words we don’t head off and stay in a boutique hotel in the South Downs, but work in a large room on campus and then go home. The plan is to run off-campus one- and two-day retreats for staff and PhD students once I’ve found a good venue. (Being elsewhere does make a difference. As does having a decent lunch that you don’t have to prepare.)

The format of the retreats draws on Rowena Murray’s work, which over the years I’ve developed and refined. Highly structured, intense and very productive, we sit around a large boardroom-style table; we then set a goal or task for the first hour-long writing session, discuss it briefly with a colleague and then begin writing. When the hour is up we talk to our colleague about how it went, set another goal and carry on. To help re-focus, we also do short generative writing activities, such as freewriting. After lunch we spend half an hour peer reviewing someone else’s work, and then carry on writing in one-hour blocks. Sometimes the format varies, depending on time and location. Typically, there are between 12–15 participants from across the faculties – although the boundaries between staff and PhD students are sometimes blurred.

Having run retreats for the last eight years, I know they work. There are lots of reasons why, but key is that they get writing done. Staff workloads, multiple demands, and the general culture in many universities, mean that despite increasing pressure to publish, there is little time allocated or energy left to make time to write. So staff write in their holidays or at weekends. Providing a dedicated time and place, away from everyday demands, email or internet distractions, creates a shared ethos and valued space to do something that is in theory an essential dimension of who we are as teachers, practitioners, researchers, academics…

Building research writing cultures takes time. Writing retreats provide a powerful way to connect staff and PhD students with each other, their research, their thinking and practices, and help build a community of writers. The conversations that take place throughout the day are full of insights (there’s no such thing as a finished writer), so sharing the frustrations, trying something new or learning from others can give direction, confidence and motivation.

Or at least that’s what participants say about writing retreats. Above all they are productive: a frequent comment is that they’ve written more in the day than they’ve written in the last two months. On occasions, the freewriting activities can result in light bulb moments and help move thinking on. At the end of the day we’re tired but most people would like more.

I’m determined that writing retreats will continue at the University and, if we get a good location and good food, they will get better.

If you’d like to take part in a writing retreat, be added to the mailing list, or would like to discuss how they could be tailored to your faculty or students, then please get in touch: Julian Ingle, Deputy Head of ASK, (julian.ingle@port.ac.uk).

Here’s a photo of us hard at work at the first retreat.

People sitting around a table

Image credits: Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Bird in flight creating a shape of an arrow

Remaking Marking Conference

February 6, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Along with colleagues from about 30 different UK universities I attended the Remaking Marking: Electronic Management of Assessment conference held on 4 September 2018 at the University of Reading. I came back feeling confident that, here at Portsmouth, we are developing the electronic management of assessment (EMA) in a reasonable way. Our use of Moodle gives us an element of flexibility that some institutions, using other VLEs, are lacking. Furthermore, the drivers for implementing EMA and people’s hopes for this approach appear to be the same here as everywhere else in the sector. On the other hand, academics have some legitimate concerns – DSE worries; offline marking; having to scroll through documents; the functionality and usability of marking tools; the need to take account of disciplinary differences – and these are shared across the sector, Portsmouth included.

One worrying aspect of the conference was the number of institutions that had tried to implement a marks integration project – and failed. It seems strange that data held in one electronic system (the VLE) cannot readily be transferred to another electronic system (the Student Record System (SRS)), but this seems to be the case. It is particularly strange given that the data we want to transfer – student marks – is so important; surely we shouldn’t have to rely on an intermediate stage in which humans can introduce error? We thought we’d cracked the problem here, several years ago, but the proposed solution was not guaranteed to be sustainable at the SRS end. Perhaps the new SRS will open up new possibilities for us.

Some interesting discussions centred around:

  • the use of rubrics, and whether (and how) they should be used more widely;
  • the use of shared QuickMarks – should a central department or section provide a library of generic QuickMarks, containing links to high-quality support resources, for use across a faculty or institution?
  • the increased use of audio feedback – research suggests that students appreciate audio feedback, but only in certain cases.

One suggestion I found particularly interesting came from Dr Rachel Maxwell, University of Northampton. They thought it important to manage student expectations regarding EMA. In particular, they found that students didn’t have a clear idea of what the assessment process entails at university level. 

A student-generated illustration of the assessment process in place at the University of Northampton. (Credit: Katie May Parsons, all rights reserved)  

Header image taken from the Remaking Marking: Electronic Management of Assessment Conference (2018). Birds Migrating in Formation 
(Assessed: 12th November 2018).  Thank you to The University of Reading for letting us use their poster.

 

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