HeLF meeting: Personalisation of Assessment and Feedback

In the last ten years, higher education has changed beyond all recognition and Heads of E-Learning will be critical to the significant changes to come.  These were some of the opening words by Professor Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas, DVC, University of Westminster, in opening the Heads of E-Learning Forum (HeLF) Meeting held on 31^st October.  The theme for this year’s meetings is personalisation and E-learning Heads from around the country came together to explore Personalisation of Assessment and Feedback.

Lisa Gray from JISC gave an overview of the JISC Assessment and Feedback programme supporting and sharing results from numerous projects now running in the UK: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/assessment

Slide from Electronic Voting Systems Presentation

How do you avoid assessment bunching on courses? Catherine Naamani from University of Glamorgan shared their Assessment Diaries project designed to ensure assessments are fairly spaced and give students an overview of all assessments across their courses including type, submission date and feedback return date.  The tool linked in with BlackBoard.

Marija Cubric shared their uses of Electronic Voting Systems, known as clickers at City, for assessment at Hertfordshire.  This technology had on the whole been well received by staff and students.  The tool was deemed easy to use and made teaching and learning more enjoyable.

Gunter Saunders and Peter Chatterton finished the day with an exploration of their Making Assessment Count (MAC) project focused on feedback.  Their presentation highlighted a project at City within broadcast journalism enabling students to reflect on assessment feedback.  This project involves Kate Reader from the School of Arts and Social Sciences and here is a presentation about the work: http://estsass.co.uk/2012/07/23/presentations-from-the-learning-city-conference/

Slide from MAC project

Also discussed here was a change management curriculum design technique called Viewpoints that involved the use of cards with principles and examples that could be used to design modules.