half and half - summative and formative quiz in one

Research in Learning Technology 2013; 21: 19153 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21i0.19153

Combining the formative with the summative: the development of a twostage online test to encourage engagement and provide personal feedback in large classes 
Susanne Voelkel





This paper explains a cycle of 3 years of different uses of online test technology.
Cycle 1 students have the choice of taking formative tests each we. Take up is small but learning gains appear to make it a useful activity.

Cycle 2 not surprisingly the author tries it as a summative  exam worth 20% of final mark. Take up is higher but learning gains decrease. Student feedback is also poor.

Cycle 3 a combination, students have to achieve 80% in a formative test in order to take the online test which are still worth 20%. Learning gains are the same as cycle 1, but number of attempts of formative have increased and student feedback is far more favourable.

Well worth a read

Webpa project

I've wanted to get this technology installed, tested and available for a long time. Thanks to IT services, we seem to have cracked it. There is a growing number of staff using group work submissions, but because of the high numbers of students it's very difficult to run peer marking. Hopefully we will see some high use next semester.
We have decided not to link it to blackboard next year. If the tests work out well we will run it as a separate application for a year and then try and link it up with the next upgrade.

feedback 'on demand' process from Leeds Met

Useful idea from staff at leeds. they are asking students to request feedback via a very organized process

Here are the details from the paper

5. Investigation of feedback behaviour and preferences with
efficient solutions for improving student satisfaction

  Authors: 
Ollie Jones and Andrea Gorra
Leeds Business School, Leeds Metropolitan University

  Abstract

  There are many pressures on academics to ‗satisfy‘ students‘ needs for feedback, not least the
inclusion of questions about feedback in the National Student Survey. In this paper we firstly
investigate how a student cohort in a UK Business school perceives and defines feedback by using a
questionnaires and group interviews. The initial research showed that there were significant
differences in views regarding both the preferred method and the relative value of different types of
feedback. In addition, feedback provided before the final summative assessment was perceived as
more preferable, than feedback after the final submission.  

  Many authors have commentated on the lack of student engagement with summative feedback but
others also argue that it is important in terms of improving individual student performance. Hence the
second part of the paper outlines an action research project which involved offering feedback ‗on
demand‘. Several authors have looked at a range of reasons why students do not collect their
feedback but this paper investigated why students Do collect feedback. We used access statistics
data from the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to identify the actual rate of feedback collection.
There appeared to be a discernable preference for seeking feedback where the difference between
the expected grade and the actual grade was greater. Survey evaluation and the VLE access data
both indicated that students were satisfied with an individual criteria approach if the mark was similar
to their expectations. 

  We argue that student cohorts are not homogenous in their feedback preferences and that it is not
resource efficient or effective for academic staff to provide detailed individual feedback to all students.
Students should be offered a hierarchy of feedback on demand and some of the effort could then be
reallocated from summative feedback to formative assessment and feedback. 

  Keywords = feedback, feedback on demand, summative feedback, formative feedback, NSS , VLE 

  http://www.studynet1.herts.ac.uk/intranet/lti.nsf/0/A8BCA73604E06A6D80257920004BB829/$FILE/IBLC%20Proceedings%202011.pdf#page=48

Recordings of David Nicol's Seminar - Enhancing assessment and feedback in higher education: principles and practice

Expert Seminar on ‘Enhancing assessment and feedback in higher education: principles and practice’ held on Wednesday 9 February, 4.30-6.00pm.

The seminar was hosted by the Academic Enhancement Unit and presented by Professor David Nicol, Professor of Higher Education, University of Strathclyde and Director of the Scottish Re-engineering Assessment Practices (REAP) project.

David Nicol is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Strathclyde. He was previously Deputy Director of the Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement at Strathclyde and Director of the Re-engineering Assessment Practices (REAP) project (www.reap.ac.uk ), a £1m project examining how new technologies could support improved assessment and feedback practices David is currently employed by the QAA Scotland as Assessment and Feedback facilitator for the Scottish higher education sector and is leading a project on student peer review and feedback funded by JISC. He is also collaborating with partners in Spain, Australia and the UK on assessment and feedback projects. David’s research publications are in assessment and feedback, e-learning developments and change management in HE. David’s thinking and output on assessment and feedback can be seen at www.reap.ac.uk

http://blackboard.ljmu.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/listContentEditable.j...