Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 35
Driving learning through assessment analytics *
Adrian Molyneux ([email protected])
Abstract:
An ongoing central aim in the School of Medicine
is to maximise the utility of our assessments data
to give students the highest quality feedback. Our
analytics site, the 'Feedback Portal', is a key element
in the delivery of the new programme. It is used by
students to gain a real-time understanding of their
level of learning, and it underpins and informs regular
student-tutor meetings. This ensures all students
can access rich, timely and personalised feedback,
discuss improvement strategies with tutors and
devise plans for their implementation. Students are
able to elect to share their feedback with others,
further strengthening communities of practice within
the PBL-centric curriculum. The project is based on
a bespoke data collection and analysis system linked
to a personalised web portal, all developed from the
ground up within the school. Students make heavy
usage of the feedback portal immediately following
the release of results. Separately, tutors report their
satisfaction with the new streamlined electronic
marking processes and their preference over the
previous paper implementation. Conclusions: A
huge amount of 'meaning' can be extracted from
assessments data, and this can be used to facilitate
interesting new modes of learning.
full academic year. The strategy incorporates many
aspects of contemporary thinking surrounding
effective assessment-feedback practice, placing
strong emphasis on the development of students’
assessment and feedback literacy through dialogue
[1-5]. The approach is characterised by a series
of iterative assessment-feedback cycles that are
supported by scheduled assessment briefing
sessions coupled to a range of formative and
collaborative learning activities related to aspects
of report writing. Having evolved the approach over
a number of years, we find that students recognise
and appreciate its rationale, show good engagement
with the associated learning activities and, providing
they fully engage across the year, produce work
that evidences acquisition of reporting skills to a
high standard for early undergraduate students. Its
originality and value lies in its clarity of purpose, the
early exposure of 1st year undergraduates to journal
articles, the novel assessment and feedback strategy,
and the parallel, iterative development of a range
of key skills including those related to information
retrieval, data communication and analysis. The
approach is flexible and adaptable to local contexts
and academic disciplines.
Taking up the Slack - Slack as a learning space *
Ian Stimpson ([email protected])#
Abstract:
A Dialogic Approach to Developing Students'
Scientific Reporting Skills *
Dave McGarvey ([email protected])
Abstract:
Our aim is to initiate the development of the generic
skills of early undergraduate chemistry students by
focusing on scientific reporting skills. To achieve
this, we have developed an approach that draws
upon chemistry journal articles as paradigms of
professional conventions and practice, coupled
with an assessment-feedback strategy that spans a
The aim of this project is to develop a rich, closed,
online learning space that can be used not only for
student interaction and collaborative learning but
also to run simulations of natural disaster scenarios
to teach geohazard mitigation methods. Slack is a
set of online collaboration tools including themed
channels (chat rooms) that can be organised into
partitioned learning spaces. It has advantages over
Facebook or linked-in groups in that the content
is closed to the outside world (important when
simulating natural disasters online) and not part of
the students’ own personal online spaces, whilst
being easier to use than discussion boards on
the KLE. Access is via web interface or desktop /
Re f l e c t i o n s o n K ee l e Lea r n i n g a n d Tea c h i n g C o n f e r e n c e
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