michael garner, griffith university

Online Assignment Submission, Allocation, Marking, Moderation and Return in Blackboard

- A Fresh Approach

Michael Garner, Griffith UniversityProfessor Stephen Colbran, University of New England

www.remarkspdf.com

The University

• Griffith University• Blackboard Academic Suite 8

– Moving to 9.1 in 2012• OUA provider

– courses in online only mode• 5 Campuses

The Context

• All courses have a presence in Blackboard• Currently 4 Assignment types as well as paper-based submission

– Native e-submission– Remote Assignment Printing– SafeAssign– Manual submission

• Blended Learning Strategy aimed at increasing the baseline of technology use in courses

• Supporting a larger project to develop consensus moderation practices to support comprehensive Quality Assurance of Assessment standards

• Reviewing the 3 online assignment tools and looking for a more integrated approach

• Responding to student feedback around easier submission and faster return of feedback

Why Remarks?

• Multiple marking• Facilitates quality feedback quickly• Consistency through shared marking criteria, comment

banks.• Offline capability

The Pilot

• 2 stage roll-out• Stage 1

– Familiarity with the RemarksPDF tool– Expectations around e-Submission, marking and return– Evaluate viability of seamless LMS integration

• Stage 2– Ongoing familiarity with advanced features of RemarksPDF– Seamless Integration with LMS

Outcomes so far• Enthusiasm from academic staff about the

– range of marking tools available in the software– students in receiving timely and meaningful feedback.

• Positive feedback from students around the time to get the feedback and quality/amount.

Issues so far:• Limited LMS integration (ie. Involves multiple steps) – corrected in Stage 2• SafeAssign: Whilst there are workarounds, unable at this stage to extract assignments submitted

via SafeAssign

LMS integration

Advanced PDF functionality

Rubrics

Text, audio and video comments

Coverpage and Endnote

Marks, criteria and comments

Handwriting, drawing and pen tools

Style libraries

Smart charts

Colour coding

Criterion-based marking

Stamps

Automatic mark addition

Moderation

Customizable

What students’ think

Questions

Michael Garnerm.garner@griffith.edu.au

07 3735 4097

Stephen Colbranstephen.colbran@remarkspdf.com

www.remarkspdf.com07 3399 4010