Have you ever thought about sparking your students’ friendly competitive side by using an activity leaderboard? It has the potential to boost your student’s motivation in engaging with your modules Learn activities and the module. You can use the leader board to highlight top performers or better still, active participation. To add the leaderRead more
Background More and more Schools within Loughborough University are looking at ways in which they can develop consistency within marking and feedback. Additionally, they are moving towards online submission to support this. As a result, colleagues are looking at ways that they can use rubrics or grid marking schemes to feedback electronically in an efficientRead more
Kai-Hong Tee (School of Business and Economics) has been using the STACK question type in Learn to generate mathematical questions. In the post below, Kai explains how it works and why it benefits students. Background I am currently teaching “Financial Management” which is offered as a core module for our second-year students studying for theRead more
Loughborough University and the Higher Education Academy Community of Practice: on Assessment and Feedback are pleased to offer a one-day event focusing on developing and implementing a self-regulatory approach to assessment. The event is taking place on Wednesday 20th September 2017 in the Stuart Mason Building and is being facilitated by the Centre for AcademicRead more
Our most recent CAP Forum focused on research-informed curriculum design. As a recent Research-informed Teaching Award winner, Dr Line Nyhagen took us through some of her wonderful successes and some of the challenges she has faced in four specific innovative teaching practices which were designed to enhance student engagement. The first is a field visitRead more
It is a common occurrence to hear staff express concerns about how feedback is used, but it’s often unclear what the expectations around feedback are for both students and staff. Simon Martin, Department of Materials (AACME), recently a conducted a survey that was aimed at establishing just how much student and staff attitudes to feedbackRead more
In this last blog post in ‘Focus On… Feedback’ month, Dr Valerie Pinfield, who is a lecturer in Chemical Engineering, shares her thinking on giving feedback to students. I wanted to produce a quick-reference guide for staff to check the feedback that we/they are giving to students, and ensure that it has the effect ofRead more
There is accumulating evidence that on-line marking and feedback can be more effective and efficient than traditional paper-based methods. Thus using technology, to deliver feedback can have several benefits:
- It allows us to provide more feedback in less time through the use of repeated comments;
- It helps provide more detailed feedback through the use of in-text annotations and general comments;
- It can help develop a stronger link between marking criteria, feedback and the grade through the additional use of a rubric.
What is GradeMark?
GradeMark is an on-line marking system which is part of Turnitin (often used to check originality), and can be accessed via Learn.
A common concern expressed by staff is that students do not make full use of the feedback provided.
Given the huge investment of time and energy in the assessment process by staff and students, this does seem to be an area worthy of further consideration.
Research indicates that staff and student views about feedback do not always coincide – staff believe that the feedback they provide will aid student learning yet students state that they do not understand the feedback nor do they know how to seek support to improve. This situation is compounded by students being unsure of their role within the assessment process and being unprepared to receive and act on feedback.
So what can be done?
The first CAP Forum, focusing on assessment, will now be held on Friday March 6th (time to be advised shortly) and will cover the February Focus On… topic of feedback as well.Read more