scof: a standardised, customisable online feedback tool
DESCRIPTION
Presentation from Edmedia 2012 on a tool that I developed to help teachers quickly provide rich assessment feedback to students.TRANSCRIPT
SCOF: A Standardised, Customisable
Online Feedback ToolDr. Ian Glover
City University London, UK{[email protected]}
Outline
• The Problem(s)
• Possible Solutions
• SCOF• Potential Uses• Demonstration
• Early Results
• Future Work
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)
Problem - Institution
• Institution-wide feedback timescale (3 weeks max.)
• Increased reliance on PhD students for grading
• Huge pressure to increase research outputs
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
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
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)
None ideal, so a ‘third way’ needed
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
SCOF
• Produces ‘rich’ electronic documents with images, links, styling, etc.
• Output not obviously based on a rubric
Example Final Output File (PDF)
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).
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
Demonstration[Click Here]
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.
But Don’t Just Take My Word For It!
Daniel Apau (Pilot User, Lecturer in Health Sciences)
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?
Questions?
http://blogs.city.ac.uk/ted
http://www.flickr.com/photos/irglover/
CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
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 good feedback practice. 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