New Options for Online Student Feedback

Learning Technologies TeamInformation Technology Service

Learning Technologies Team

Judith JurowskaFaculty of

Arts & Humanities

Martin EdneyFaculty of Science

Julie MulveyFaculty of

Social Sciences & Health

Dr Malcolm MurrayLearning Technologies

Team Leader

Session outline

Voting systems – Julie MulveyExcel Spreadsheet – Judith Jurowska

Blogs – Christine Bohlander & David TualGradeMark – Judith JurowskaAudio/video – Martin Edney

Preview: Feedback Tool – Malcolm Murray

New Options for Feedback

Using Voting Systems

Julie Mulvey

Voting systems

Audience Response System (ARS)www.keepad.co.uk

TurningPoint plug-in to Microsoft PowerPoint

Voting Systems

Research by Marina Sawdon from Phase 1 Medicine in using an Audience Response System

• Assess prior knowledge Bransford 1999

Question asked before lecture starts

• ‘Learning occurred’ Same question asked at the end of lecture

• Knowledge retention/ decay at different time points

Question asked again at 1 week and 4 weeks after lecture

Voting Systems

Voting Systems

Evaluation

• The audience response system gives me feedback on my progress

99% student satisfaction• The audience response system aids my knowledge

recall98% student satisfaction

• The audience response system consolidates my knowledge

98% student satisfaction

Voting Systems

“Use of KEEpads was excellent, getting instant feedback is a good learning tool”

“I liked the KEEpad system because it allows you to answer questions without anyone knowing if you got it wrong or not.”

“I liked the use of the KEEpads, it helped break up the lectures and gave feedback”

“KEEpad use…gave instant feedback and kept me focused and immediately applying the lecture content to new situations”

Voting Systems

Marina’s Conclusions:

• Improves and facilitates learning• Increases student participation “…it wakes me

up!!!”

• Improves knowledge retention• Instant feedback• Low cost• Students love it!

Sawdon, M. 2009. Improving Knowledge Retention using KEEpad.

Medical Education 43(5): 487-487

Voting Systems

• KEEpad only one type of voting system

• PollEverywhere.com Online system

• Informal SIG at Durham• ESTICT (Engaging Students through

In-Class Technology) (http://estict.ning.com)

New Options for FeedbackAutomated Excel Spreadsheet

Judith Jurowska

Frederico Federici Spreadsheet

Dr F M Federici Spreadsheet

Creating criteria

Entering the scale

Pulling the comments together

Enter Candidate details

Printing the report

Finished student sheet

Results Summary

• Marking time reduced by 60%• Setup time was considerable. (once only)

• Double marking was possible• Second marker was impressed by the

volume of feedback provided• Needs further work before it can be

used widely.

Liverpool John Moores University

Dr Phil Denton

QED article by Kevin Hinde

QED Issue 8 Michaelmas Term 2008

New Options for Feedback

Using Blogs for feedback on written workChristine Bohlander

& David TualCentre for Foreign Language Study

Problems related to feedback and possible solutions

• Keeping track /a trace of past work and feedback

• Students’ follow-up on feedback

• Repetitive feedback to different students

• Collecting work, keeping records, photocopying/filing

• Ask student to re-write and resubmit

• Provide feedback in plenary session

A different solution: the blogs

• What is it?!

The blogs in practice

• Students are set homework to be submitted via the blogs on DUO

• We feedback on their work using the following colour code: - ‘slips/lapses’, ‘first-order mistakes’ and ‘second-order mistakes’ - correction of ‘errors’- word(s) or clusters to be deleted (because wrong or corrected in green)

The blogs in practice

• Students are invited to correct their mistakes in blue (and crossing out the original mistakes, but not to delete them) and to look at the rest of the corrections

• Thanks to the colour code, we can then quickly check whether the students have accurately corrected their mistakes.

The blogs in practice

A different solution: the blogs

Keeping track /a trace of past work and feedback

Students’ follow-up on feedback

Repetitive feedback to different students

Collecting work, keeping records, photocopying/filing

Ask student to re-write and resubmit

Provide feedback in plenary session

A different solution: the blogs

Online feedback leading to a better use of teaching time

Students can concentrate on main issues and easily resubmit

‘Unlimited’, easy-to-access virtual storage space

Students’ feedback

Students’ feedback

Essential aspects

• Definition of clear and concrete aims and learning outcomes for essay-writing

• Emphasis on learning process and monitoring of progress

• Collaborative aspect: peer feedback

The blogs in practice

The idea of a collaborative blog

• Students cannot only read each others‘ entries, BUT

• They can also post comments and• They can correct each others‘

mistakes

The blogs in practice

Anticipated problems

• No anonymity possible embarrassment

• Students’ feedback might not be constructive

• German umlauts (ä, ö, ü)

Results of questionnaire

Over 80% of students (strongly) agreed:

• Overall, I prefer posting my written work on the blog to handing in handwritten work because of its positive effect on my learning.

• The opportunity to be able to go back for amendments and revision is important for me.

• I can learn from reading my peers’ work and the tutor’s feedback on their work.

• I am happy for my peers to comment on my work.

Results of questionnaire

BUT only 50% (strongly) agreed:•  I am happy to comment on my

peers’ work.

Conclusion

 • Students are encouraged to reflect

on their own performance.

• A continuous process of learning with easy monitoring

• While receiving peer feedback is appreciated, students appear to be reluctant to give feedback

References

• James, Carl (1998), Errors in language learning and use, exploring error analysis, Longman: London and New-York

• Klapper, J. (2006), Understanding and developing good practice, Language teaching in higher education, CILT: London

New Options for Feedback

GradeMark by

TurnitinUKJudith Jurowska

Turnitin System used for:• student education about plagiarism• detecting text matches against a student database, journals and the internet

What is GradeMark?

GradeMark provides online marking and feedback

Create a GradeMark Assignment

1. Create a Turnitin assignment(you can turn off the plagiarism check if necessary)

2. Mark using GradeMark’s functions:• Rubrics • Comments• ‘Quick marks’

–Composition–Format–Punctuation–Usage

How can GradeMark help?

• save time marking • provide in context, legible feedback to

your students • provide consistent feedback for large

numbers of assignments • manage the marking process where there

is more than one marker• build a reusable comment resource

Case Study – Steve Lyon

Steve LyonSenior Lecturer : Department of Anthropology

Context

• 1st Year Social Anthropology course• Purpose (aims and objectives)

• Assess understanding of the topic• Improve essay writing skills

• Teaching method • lecture, seminars• formative essay with feedback

• Resources: • Postgraduate teachers• Marking rubric • GradeMark software (available through Turnitin in duo)

• Final assessment - summative essay

Rationale

…when we started doing this [on paper] we had students coming and saying, “I got lots of comments and so and so only got two little lines.”

I wanted somehow to, not impose, but encourage a more consistent amount of feedback for everyone and ensure similar things were being flagged up.

Quote from Steve Lyon

Rubric Criteria (6)

• Answer: Does the essay answer the assigned essay question?

• Sources: Does the essay properly cite all sources? Are all cited references included in the bibliography?

• Logic: Does the answer, build a demonstrable argument based on credible and appropriate evidence?

• Style: Is the essay articulate and coherent? Does it use appropriate language and vocabulary for the purpose? Is it too chatty and informal? Is it unnecessarily complicated?

• Spelling: Are there spelling and grammatical errors? Do these impede communication of the ideas?

• Presentation: Is the bibliography correctly formatted? Is the text in some unusual font? Are the margins correct

Rubric weightings

• 5 weightings for the 6 criteria• Poor (10)• Fair (49)• Good (59)• Very good (69)• Excellent (80)

• Grade by clicking the boxes in the rubric.• the maximum for each criteria is capped at 80%• can manually give more for something beyond the

criteria.

Results: Staff perspective

• Fatigue is less of an issue… The twentieth bad essay no longer invokes lots of exclamation marks, ‘What is this!’

Paraphrased from Steve Lyon QED article

Saved time for markers

Results: Staff perspective

Paraphrased from Steve Lyon QED article

Saved time for markers

• Fatigue is less of an issue…• The ‘marking rubric’… helps automate the process of allocating marks against set criteria. This was particularly helpful to the teaching assistants.

Results: Staff perspective

Paraphrased from Steve Lyon QED article

Saved time for markers

• Fatigue is less of an issue… • A ‘rubric’… helps automate the marking process

• GradeMark allowed Steve to manage this process ensuring a higher degree of quality control and consistency despite the distributed approach to teaching and marking.

Results: Student Perspective

• The student gets at least six comments even if the postgraduate marker [is] less confident…

• Students really like it especially as I give them the rubric before the assignment so they know what they are working to.

• Students like being able to get the feedback online.

• They get more feedback … the essays will be riddled with these little comments that are specific to a paragraph

Paraphrased from Steve Lyon QED article

Improved feedback

QED article

Lyon, Steve. “Making the grade: Helping postgraduate teaching assistants with their marking and feedback..” QED (Durham University), Michaelmas term 2008.

Comments options

Quickmarks

Accessing GradeMark

Accessing GradeMark

How it works

How it works - Markup

How it works – Student View

Click on the Rubric to Mark

New Options for Feedback

Audio/Video

Martin Edney

Audio / Video Feedback

What?• Lecturer records feedback as

• sound file• video file (talking head)• video file (screen capture of submitted

work, with audio commentary)

Audio / Video Feedback

Why?• Students like it – they report

• They get more feedback• They get quicker feedback• “it’s not face to face but it’s certainly one

to one”• Speed (as quick as or quicker than

writing)

Audio / Video Feedback

Why (continued)?• More effective

• Students pay attention• Tone of voice / inflection• Allows you to talk direct to student work

Audio / Video Feedback

How?• Record audio / video file

• e.g. use headset, digital dictaphone, Camtasia, Jing

• one file per student• Deliver file to student

• duo Grade Centre – feedback file option• shared area (e.g. duo Files tab)• email

Audio / Video Feedback

Tips• Individual feedback to each student +

generic feedback to group• Look through submitted work before

you start recording• Say student name or number at the

beginning• Summary / mark at end of recording

Audio / Video Feedback

Some feedback from students• I think this is a much better system than paper

feedback.  I know I got a lot more from it than if you had just had to tick boxes and given me a comment in that little box on the piece of paper.  It was also much easier to use than anticipated, and I definitely think you should recommend this to other lecturers

• I found the feedback for the formative much better than 'normal' written feedback.

(reported by Ian Greener, Applied Social Sciences, Durham University)

Students from Sheffield Hallam & Chester giving their opinion on audio feedback at a MEL-SIG event in Glasgow [sound file link]

Examples

• Audio example−Comment on draft dissertation work−Sound file available from “A Word In Your Ear

2009” website. −Part of Davies, D. Rogerson-Revell, P. &

Witthaus, G. An exploratory study of speech styles in audio feedback to M- level students

−Presented at “A Word In Your Ear 2009”, see−http://research.shu.ac.uk/lti/awordinyourear2

009/papers.html

Examples

• Video example−English for Academic purposes course−Russell Stannard, University of Westminster−Video file available from

http://www.russellstannard.com/king/king.html

−For full details, see http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/publications/casestudies/technology/camtasia.php

Jing for video feedback

• David Tual

My motivation to use Jing

• The possibility to ‘talk’ the students through their work in an asynchronous manner, giving them the chance to stop and think as the feedback is being given to them.

• It takes no space on my J: drive, and there is no need to email or post big files on DUO.

• It can be accessed from any pc with an internet connection.

• Fast and easy to send to the students.• Provide some extra listening practice for

students.

A quick example

• Set a homework task to be submitted via email

• Record my feedback with Jing• Copy the link to the video into the

email reply and immediately send it to the student

• Video file available from http://screencast.com/t/M2ZjMWZmO

New Options for Feedback

Preview: Future Feedback Tool

in duo

Malcolm Murray

Future Feedback tool

A work in progress...

Future Feedback tool

Select Assignment

File Naming Policy

Feedback Template

Feedback Template - Excel

Feedback Template - Text

Downloading Files

Student Work & Summary

Marking & Feedback

Marking & Feedback

Marking & Feedback

Individual Feedback Files

One per Student

Bulk Upload

Grade Centre

Contact

If you would like to know more or have any questions please contact us via

itservicedesk@durham.ac.uk