2. Outline
• The Problem(s)
• Possible Solutions
• SCOF
• Potential Uses
• Demonstration
• Early Results
• Future Work
3. Problem - Sector (UK)
• Increasing student demand for meaningful feedback.
• Higher student fees = better ‘value’ needed.
• Reduced government funding = less resources per student.
• National Union of Students Charter on Feedback & Assessment
(Summary)
5. Problem - Institution
• Institution-wide feedback timescale (3 weeks max.)
• Increased reliance on PhD students for grading
• Huge pressure to increase research outputs
6. Problem – School/Faculty
• Wide variety of assessment methods:
• Online, Offline (Hard copy), Situated (Labs)
• Reports, schematics, models, software, presentations, …
• Little exposure to learning technologies or pedagogical
good practice
• Conservative mind-set – resistant to new processes
7. Possible Solutions
• Quality-focussed solutions
• Formal moderation of all feedback
• Mandatory training in providing good feedback – including periodic
reviews
• Peer review of feedback
• Speed-focussed solutions
• Rubrics/Feedback schema
• Brief audio/video summaries
• Generic feedback for whole cohort
8. But…
• Rubrics/Schemes trade individuality for speed (Stevens & Levi, 2004)
• Detailed feedback necessarily focuses on errors/problems
• Little time to encourage and praise good work (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006)
• Students have mixed reactions to rubrics
• Like the speed of feedback they allow
• Dislike the impersonal text
(Andrade & Du, 2005)
• Yet, standardisation can help students make better use of
feedback (Duncan, 2007)
11. SCOF
• Aims to give the speed of
rubrics, but encourage
consistent, high-quality personal
feedback.
• Can include grades for each
feedback item.
• 3-stage process
• Select scheme values
• Customise generated output
• Save final file
Example Scheme in SCOF
Feedback Editing
12. SCOF
• Produces ‘rich’ electronic
documents with images, links,
styling, etc.
• Output not obviously based on a
rubric
Example Final Output File (PDF)
13. SCOF
• Intended for use on Tablets (e.g. iPads, Android, etc.) and
Smartphones, as well as PCs.
• Can import gradebook from Moodle for easier
personalisation.
• Though not linked to particular assessment type, or distribution
platform (i.e. VLE).
14. Potential Uses
• ‘Instant’ feedback, e.g. for presentations
• Support ‘Feedforward’ practices by giving links to extra
resources.
• Provide quality base feedback for use by inexperienced
graders
• Peer review by students
• Focus on common aspects = more time on specifics
16. Early Results
• Pilots across 4 schools at City (Social Sciences, Health,
Informatics, Engineering)
• Students appreciate the increased speed of receiving
feedback
• Staff like the efficiency increases in producing quality
feedback
• But, some resistance due to having to plan the feedback scheme prior
to grading.
17. But Don’t Just Take
My Word For It!
Daniel Apau (Pilot User, Lecturer in Health Sciences)
18. Future Work
• Open Source release
• Feedback bank to enable reuse of existing items
• Save values in database, then statistical analysis of
performance across assessments
• Closer integration with Moodle
• Offline version?
20. References
• Andrade, H. & Du, Y. (2005).
Student perspectives on rubric-referenced assessment. Practical Assessment,
Research & Evaluation, 10(5). [Online]
• Duncan, N. (2007). ‘Feed-forward’: improving students’ use of tutors’ comments
. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 32 (2). [Online]
• Nicol, D. J. & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006).
Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of g
. Studies in Higher Education, 31 (2). [Online]
• Stevens, D.D. & Levi, A.J. (2004). Introduction to rubrics: An assessment tool to
save grading time, convey effective feedback and promote student learning,
Sterling, VA: Stylus
Editor's Notes
Feedback charter has 10 principles: 1. Formative assessment and feedback should be used throughout the programme 2. Students should have access to face-to-face feedback for at least the first priece of assessent each academic year 3. Receiving feedback should not be exclusive to certain forms of assessment 4. Feedback should be timely 5. Students should be provided with a variety of assessment methods 6. There should be anonymous marking for all summative assessment 7. Students should be able to submit assessment electronically 8. Students should be supported to critique their own work 9. Programme induction should include information on assessment practices and undersatning marking criteria 10. Students should be given a choice of format for feedback