Can electronic marking help to engage students with assessment and feedback?DR ALISON GRAHAMSCHOOL OF BIOLOGYALISON.GRAHAM@NCL.AC.UK

DR SARA MARSHAMSCHOOL OF MARINE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY SARA.MARSHAM@NCL.AC.UK

17th Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference5th - 6th January 2017

@alisonigraham@sara_marine

Aims of

Project

Initial aims: To engage students in the entire marking process from the setting of marking criteria through the receipt and feed-forward application of feedback

To write/design effective marking criteria that are specific to pieces of work

To engage students in the process of using marking criteria in preparation for an assignment

To provide feedback on coursework that links directly to marking criteria

Use GradeMark to develop libraries of feedback comments that can function much like dialogue with students

Implicit questions in our original proposal:

1. Can we involve students in writing marking criteria?

2. What do students already know about marking criteria?

3. Can typed (even repeated!) comments work like a dialogue? Will students recognise this?

Aim 1: Write new marking criteria

Understand students’ prior

knowledge/create new assignment

Write new marking criteria

(based on student

knowledge)

Engage students

with criteria

Aim Two: Engaging students with marking criteria

Objective #1 - to help students understand the wording in the marking criteria

Objective #2 - to encourage students to start differentiating between the descriptions of different grade boundaries and spotting what will help them to achieve high marks

Objective #3 - to engage students in the practice of peer marking (marking existing student work against the set of criteria)

Aims Three and Four: Use GradeMark to provide feedback linked to marking criteria

GradeMark is:• Part of Turnitin software, accessed at Newcastle University through

VLE (Blackboard)

• A platform through which students submit coursework online as Word document or PDF (or in other file formats)

• A platform through which markers can provide three types of feedback:o In-text comments: Bubble comments, Text comments, QuickMark

commentso Rubrico General comments: Voice comments and Text comments

GradeMark

Go to Assessment inbox See submissions, similarity score and

marks (once graded) for the whole class

Check if student has viewed their feedback

Library comment

Text comment

Bubble comment

Using GradeMark: Types of Comments

Make Library comments individual

QuickMarks

Highlighting/colour-coding

Mark against a rubric

Add assignment-specific, module-specific, School or Faculty-wide marking criteria

Mark each piece of work according to the rubric; use qualitatively or quantitatively

Turning criteria into comments

S/T

A

R

1 2 3 4 5 6

Creating own library

Each comment linked to one of the criterion with letter and number

For each component, comment on: How student meets criterion

What student could have done to achieve next grade boundary

R 4

R 5

Mark work using criteria and general comments

Voice (up to three minutes)

Text (up to 5,000 characters)

Final mark

Student feedback - marking criteria session

Student feedback - marking criteria session

Student questionnaire

Activity

Using the example assessment and the comment library provided, ‘mark’ the example assessment with the library comments

Try to make library comments individual to the student

Practice adding bubble and text comments Assign each criterion a grade using the rubric Consider including final comments using

either text and audio

Using either the marking criteria provided, or your own criteria, create a series of assessment-specific comments

Include comments to show:How the student has achieved a grade

boundary for a specific criterionWhat the student needed to improve to

achieve the next grade boundary

Activity

Our final reflections & questions for you

Continued development of marking criteria and integration of criteria into additional modules.

Further thought on what information/activities help students engage with the assessment process.

Managing the challenges of staff and student engagement.

Are there ‘good practice’ guidelines for writing marking criteria?

Can students be engaged to write the marking criteria themselves? If so, what strategies can be used to engage students with criteria?

What is the balance between in-class time and independent engagement?

Thank you for your participation

Any questions?

Our thanks to all of our students who took part and shared their opinions Thanks to

Newcastle University

Innovation Fund for funding the original work &

ongoing supportDR ALISON GRAHAMSCHOOL OF BIOLOGYALISON.GRAHAM@NCL.AC.UK

DR SARA MARSHAMSCHOOL OF MARINE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY SARA.MARSHAM@NCL.AC.UK @alisonigraham

@sara_marinehttp://www.slideshare.net/SaraMarsham/presentations

http://www.slideshare.net/AlisonGraham15