Below you can find the transcripts of the interactive map from the July Benefit Connect Series - Celebrating success and addressing challenges in assessment.
Emma Flint, Education and Innovation Lead (Law) and Lecturer, University of Birmingham, England
Using Creative Pedagogy and Authentic Assessment to #DisruptLegalEducation
When you think of law, what images come to mind? Probably some dynamic barrister or solicitor (usually from TV) or even someone married to a celebrity. Sounds cool, innovative and creative? So, you’d expect the way we traditionally assess university law students to match that expectation, right? WRONG. So much so, that Stanford University Professor Margaret Hagan has even posed this question as of law students. Why? Partly due to the fact that many law schools stick to the ‘tried & tested’ ways of assessing, namely using unseen closed book timed on campus exams or written courseworks involving essays and answers to problem questions.
I want to #DisruptLegalEducation by challenging these more traditional assessment formats through the use of creative pedagogy and authentic assessment. So, within my innovative 2nd year law degree core module ‘Legal Communications’, produce a ‘Piece of Work’ – a POW – that can be anything but an essay or problem question. The variety of POW formats produced for assessment are therefore more authentic and aligned to the real world. In 2020/21, students submitted blogs, podcasts, art, comics, videos, poetry, songs, stories, spoken word pieces, pieces of Legal Design, research briefings, reports to Parliamentary Committees, professional legal writing options (letter of client advice or research memorandum to a partner in practice) and even Instagram & Twitter feeds.
Want to know how I can make all of this come together and work, in a subject of law that demands academic rigour? I can hear you asking yourself ‘What on EARTH are the marking criteria she uses for this module? How does it work?’ Because it does #DisruptLegalEducation, and I let the quality of student work speak for itself, so hovering your phone over the QR codes on this page to see 2 video POW’s from previous law students, Rochelle and Jay.
And if you want to know more – follow the link below to watch an extended version of this video exploring creative pedagogy, authentic assessment and the curriculum design (including the ‘magic’ marking criteria) underpinning the Legal Comms module. Happy to share materials – drop me an email too.
Twitter handles: @MrsGingerLawyer, @bhamlaw, @UoB_HEFI, @unibirmingham
Stephen Murphy, Associate Professor, Birmingham City University, England
Online vivas and presentations
Once upon a time... a brief tale of 100s of online vivas at the height of COVID...
Hello. This is the tale of an assessment that went well, that could have gone badly.
So it takes place on a hundred student module on the second year of three computing courses. It's traditionally assessed as multiple face-to-face vivas and presentations. This is because they mimic technical interviews students face in industry, they're rigorous and allow easy detection of cheating, and they develop communication and other transferable skills.
So we did pretty much what we always do, with a few modifications. Students booked assessment timeslots using the Moodle scheduler. This meant they could work around any additional COVID constraints. They were randomly assigned tasks from a database, so they could peer support, but not collude. The main innovation was doing all of the presentations and vivas on Microsoft Teams. This meant they could be recorded for future reference, and students could participate from anywhere. Feedback and marks were generated using our AssessFlow automated feedback system. This was quick, accurate and consistent.
So this tale ended happily for all. If you want to know more, please let me know.
Twitter handle: @BCUPressOffice
Dr Stefania Paredes Fuentes, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Warwick, England
Assessments for Engagement: Fostering Learning Communities through Assessments
I share my experience to help students engage with the subject and contribute to foster and maintain a learning community.
This was achieved by using activities that were engaging, flexible, collaborative, and allowed students agency in assessment.
To allow flexibility students had six activities that could be making videos, podcasts or articles on topics that mirrored the topics covered in the module. To get full marks they needed to complete 2 out of 6, and provide peer-feedback for a third activity.
Group work and the use of private channels in Microsoft Teams was an incredible tool to facilitate communication but also to help students to feel part of the community.
Making mistakes in these activities was part of the learning process.
The quality of the work created by students was excellent and most students completed most activities.
They really enjoyed them!
Twitter handles: @steffie_pf @warwickuni @warwickecon
Amy Stickels, Course Director, University of Warwick, Engalnd
Online Forum Debates
How do we encourage reluctant student to take part in online debates? One answer is to use an assessment using written, online forum debates.
I teach philosophy on the Warwick International Foundation Programme which is for students for whom English is a second language.
I've found that my students previously have lost confidence in debate and found it challenging to put forward their own points of view rigorously so I introduced this assessment to address this but also to encourage positive debate in online learning spaces such as the pandemic has required us to do.
Students were required to write 2 x 300 word assessed forum responses, where they were expected to justify their point of view but also to analyze and respond to others. I use virtual learning environment Moodle because it's easy to set up, but also because only people on the course can view the forum debate.
As result, I have found that students in class are more confident in debate and have more developed skills than previous cohorts in arguing their opinion just in discussion, but also in longer essays. They also got much better at debating with others as well.
Russ Kitson, Director of Education, University of Warwick, England
Developing Students’ Commercial Awareness Skills: A game-based chemistry practical experiment
Research studies show that while chemistry students realize some of the skills they develop, including teamwork and communication, they're not very aware of other skills that they could develop, or sometimes they don't even have the opportunity to develop some skills, such as commercial awareness and entrepreneurship.
My name is Russ Kitson from the University of Warwick in the UK and Paolo Coppo and I developed a way to address this using a game based chemistry practical experiment in the lab that I'd like to tell you about briefly now.
So this is taking some of the students' experience that they've already got in structure elucidation and putting it into a game where they set up a mock business to try and turn a profit through the day, elucidating the structure of unknown compounds that have been confiscated at the border. If they correctly identify the compound they get money to reinvest, but the techniques they use to elucidate the compounds come at a price. So they've got a structured pricing system of what they can use across the day. The strategy for the business and the student roles within it: so who's a CEO, who's a financial officer, who's a technical officer, they're entirely student led, and once students have done their lab experiment, they present their results as a team to a panel of experts, including business and chemistry professionals.
The feedback from this has been overwhelmingly positive. Students were telling us that it made them feel they could do real research, they felt that the skills will be useful for them from this experiment beyond just if they go and do chemistry. They found it was interesting, challenging enough and they were able to make their own decisions throughout the day.
And when asked about their skills and to reflect on what sort of skills they developed through this experience, they told us that they developed things like problem solving, analysis, teamwork, critical thinking and of course commercial awareness and business skills. And importantly they had fun in the process. They enjoyed the lab experience they enjoyed doing the presentation as a team and the whole idea of this being a game and developing their skills.
So that's what we've done. Hopefully that's of interest and do get in touch if you have any questions.
Twitter handle: @warwickchem
Tracey Coppins, Head of Health Foundation Year, Keele University, England
Assessing Communication Skills in the Virtual World
Can you assess communication skills in the virtual environment? This was a question that we had to ask ourselves at Keele University for students on the Health Foundation Year. In previous years students were assessed on a five-minute conversation with a simulated patient and this year we decided to use Microsoft Teams in place of face-to-face assessments. It was easy to see whether students were paying attention to the simulated patient and we were able to assess their nonverbal communication skills such as tone of voice and eye contact. An additional benefit was being able to record the assessments for moderation. The only downside to using a virtual platform was that some students had Internet problems on the day but, it was easy to rearrange an assessment for the small number of students that had been affected. It was a steep learning curve but something that we are definitely going to keep for the future because of the benefits that it gave us.
Twitter handles: @HCoppins @KeeleUniversity @KeeleFY
Dr Ellie Davison, Director of Teaching and Learning for the Foundation Studies Centre, The University of Lincoln, England
Collaborative, online assessment preparation and peer-review
How can we facilitate peer feedback when students may be studying in different places and perhaps even different time zones? Can we nurture an online learning community so that students feel supported whenever and wherever they’re studying?
In the Foundation Studies Centre at the University of Lincoln, we’ve had great success with a scaffolded approach, firstly using Talis elevate to conduct group evaluations of example submissions. Students highlight text and add comments, which can be threaded and nested to allow for a dialogue. The lecturer can also add prompts and clarify any areas of uncertainty.
The evaluation skills developed are then applied to a peer-feedback activity, facilitated through Turnitin PeerMark, where students’ draft submissions are randomly allocated amongst the cohort and online feedback is elicited through a series of question boxes, all aligned to the marking rubric.
Both engagement with and the quality of peer review produced using this approach was higher than ever, especially for students who are less confident to critique face to face or for whom flexibility of learning opportunities is vital.
Twitter handles: @UoL_BlendED @unilincoln @UoLScience
Stephen Beck, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Head of Department, The University of Sheffield, England
Threshold assessment
Hello, I'm Steven Beck. Today I'm going to talk to you about threshold assessment. One of the things that annoyed me about it Assessment is the fact that you can get through a course by only doing about 25% of it. Your two questions out of three to answer, you could get one of those right, then you can pass the course without having to engage with it. I find this a really difficult thing to deal with because students haven't necessarily got the learning outcomes for it. What we can do is we can assess just to that threshold. Just make sure the students have achieved the learning outcomes. See whether they're good enough, see whether they've passed, and then you can set them free.
You can do the threshold assessment with multiple choice short answers, asking them questions some other way to make sure they've achieved every learning outcome for the course. So once you've assessed to threshold, then you can be a lot more free with what you do. It doesn't have to be in the normal sense that we do things because we've already assessed the learning outcomes. What we're able to do here is, instead of worrying about those learning outcomes, set the students free and give them something fun to do, to do with the subject, to actually let them test how good they are. What we've done with threshold and mastery is separate out are they good enough and how good are they. So pick up those learning outcomes, make sure that they've achieved them and then set the students free. I offer you threshold and mastery.
Twitter handle: @sheffielduni
Jackie Carter, Professor of Statistical Literacy, University of Manchester, England
A Reflective Framework for Experiential Learning in the Social Sciences
Hi, I'm Jackie Carter. I am a professor in statistical literacy at the University of Manchester in the UK. And I teach research methods in the context of inequalities, across the social sciences. I have developed a paid internship programme where optionally my students get the opportunity to go into the workplace to put their research skills into practice in the summer between the end of their second and start with their third year. In the past, these placements have always been face to face - physical - but because of the pandemic, we've moved them online. So we are now having virtual remote work placements, which means we can run twice as many as well, which is a great outcome actually, for us of the pandemic. But in order to assess the learning, I have developed a reflection framework. And in the past, this has been undertaken by the students email emailing into me over the course of a summer, three reflective pieces as attachment to emails. But since the pandemic we've gone online, so everything now is going to be collected virtually in the cloud, they will all have an individual space that we create for them, where they can log their learning. And what I'm intending to do in the future is think about using Padlet for that. So actually, they'll be able to see where each other is and we'll be able to share some of the learning collectively across all of those students who do work placements. And that's my contribution. Thank you.
Twitter handles: @JackieCarter, @OfficialUoM
Asad K. Ghalib, Senior Lecturer in Management Sciences, Liverpool Hope University, England
Developing an Integrated and Collaborative Learning Experience Through A Cross-National and Cross-Sectoral Model
Research has shown that students learn best in the classroom, where they feel free to express their ideas, and where they feel needed and comfortable with their peers. This learning and teaching model is based on this approach.
Every year, students on the strategic management module on the MBA programme, write a short case study derived from their own professional experience. This mini case study is based on one of the theories, models and frameworks of strategic management that they have covered in class.
The underlying logic is to enable them to articulate their thinking by recalling the lectures delivered, and then putting into context, the theoretical models and frameworks, and relating them to the practical dimensions from their professional work settings.
In class, students discuss their individual cases, which leads to a rich discussion between peers and the tutor. This process thus reinforces the learning experience by relating theory to practice.
Twitter handles: @Tweet_Ghalib, @LiverpoolHopeUK
Dr Sarah Ward Clavier, Senior lecturer in History, University of the West of England, England
Mapping the World: Using Google MyMaps in the Pandemic
Have you ever wondered where foodstuffs, objects, and other commodities in your house come from? Take for example tea, spices, coffee? This assessment takes what are now common household materials and uses them as a way to explore the history of Britain and the world in the early modern period. This was before the pandemic a research essay, but after I decided that the visual and interactive component of the assignment needed to be made more central. Now it includes a visually attractive map which tells the historical story of a student’s chosen commodity. They were taught how to use the free MyMaps software, how to construct a dataset, research the pins on it, and design the pins and legend so that it presented their work effectively and attractively. This amendment meant that alongside the essay, the students had created a visual artefact, and now have new ways to present their ideas.
Twitter handles: @uweHistory, @UWEBristol
Laura Harrison, Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of the West of England, England
Youth and youth culture: student-led online conference
The experience of a young punk growing up in the 1970s in rural Cambridgeshire. Slogging gangs fighting vicious battles over territory in late nineteenth century Birmingham. Adult responses to the Teddy Boys – beyond the headlines about juvenile delinquency and the Notting Hill riots.
These are just a few of the research essays final year History students on my ‘Youth and Youth Culture in Modern Britain’ module have been working on this year. Students on the module research and present a detailed piece of work on a topic of their choice connected to the themes of the module. This final research essay is supported by a number of smaller assignments across the year, including a presentation. The formerly classroom-based presentation became an online event. Students pre-recorded a short presentation on their research, I arranged these recorded ‘papers’ into conference panels, and the students watched and prepared questions on the presentations they viewed. The entire class then came together to attend a ‘live’ online discussion workshop.
Students were supported to develop new technological skills, were able to get feedback on early versions of their work, took part in peer-to-peer conversations about their ideas, improved their presentation and communication skills, and the quality of their final research essays. The discussion session in particular was lively and engaging, and entirely student-led – and this is why I will be continuing to use this assessment activity beyond the pandemic.
Twitter handles: @drlau_harrison, @uwebristol
Catherine Hayes, Professor of Health Professions Pedagogy and Scholarship, University of Sunderland, England
Using Dialogic Assessment with Doctoral Students: Transformative Learning in Practice
See document on map.
Twitter handles: @ProfCatherHayes, @sunderlanduni
Alison Griffiths - Senior Lecturer and Vikki Wynn - Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Society, University of Sunderland, England
Rethinking Assessment: The Catalyst to a Cultural Revolution
Hi! Nice to be back on campus after such a long time of online teaching and learning. What’s been happening since we last saw each other?
Well – what a year! If you remember we’d set about developing a new dialogic assessment model for the PGCE programme after that trainee said he the work nearly killed him! Crumbs, that was the last thing we intended to do!
We know that the programme is distance learning but it really hit us just how disconnected some of our trainees must feel and really started to think about the purpose of the assessment – surely there’s a better way to do this.
Absolutely – trawling through a massive portfolio online with no opportunity to engage in conversation or ask questions was utterly disheartening!
So – we utilised best practice and seem to ¬have been reading for a year about assessment but what we’ve come to realise is that it’s actually much bigger than that. We’ve had to look at the overall ethos of the programme, align it more closely to our own philosophy of teaching and learning and create a community for our Early Years trainees.
We’ve gone so far as to say we’ve started a cultural revolution!
It might sound a bit grandiose but actually, it really has been revolutionary for our programme with such a dramatic change in attitudes, approaches and the way we operate.
One of the main things is the workload. Not that we’ve diminished the value of the assessment but the paperwork is definitely more efficient and we both now look forward to it and enjoy the dialogic assessment.
And now, in contrast to ‘it nearly killed me!’ our trainees enjoy the experience as well, telling us how much of an impact it’s having on their employability and self-confidence.
We’re at a point where we’re happy with the changes and seeing the impact they’re having but it’s an ongoing process for us. However, in the meantime, we know we’re fulfilling our tagline of ‘Distance learning doesn’t need to feel distant’.
As you can tell, we’re really passionate about this and we’re more than happy to share.
Dr Elizabeth Hidson, Senior Lecturer in Education, University of Sunderland, England
Video-Enhanced Dialogic Assessment on the Assessment-Only Route to UK Qualified Teacher Status
In 2020 schools closed all over the world and international travel stopped.
What do you do when you're part of a flying faculty team that involves travelling all around the world assessing teachers in international schools?
Of course, education didn't just stop and nor did we.
I'm Elizabeth Hidson, and I'm here to talk to you about the way that my team moved to using video-enhanced dialogic assessment on the Assessment-Only Route to UK qualified teacher status (QTS).
Normally, teachers who have trained outside the UK can register for a 12-week pathway to in-person assessment in order to achieve qualified teacher status. In 2020 instead of the live in-person visits, interviews and observations, we moved to using a video-enhanced dialogic assessment process to carry out lesson observations and assessments entirely online instead of in-person, where possible. This incorporated video lessons and live-streamed remote lessons, online interviews and a dialogic summative assessment process.
A video-enhanced lesson observation is a process whereby the video is recorded, whether or not the observer is actually in the room. The video is then reviewed by both the teacher and the observer, and a process of video stimulated recall reflection and dialogue is used, resulting in written feedback. Then we move to a process of dialogic assessment. The candidate collates a portfolio of evidence for summative assessment during week 12, then the candidate and the assessor explore and discuss the evidence of practice in a shared online dialogic space and is most easily understood as an online viva-style assessment.
We're very proud of the work that we've been doing, and that we won a Vice-Chancellor's team award for this work. We put together quality assurance processes and protocols. We implemented VEDA: very successful pilots. We developed training materials for staff and carried out parallel research activities. We're in the process of internal and external dissemination now.
I hope that I have interested you or inspired you, and I'm more than happy to continue the conversation outside. You'll find us on Twitter on either of those two Twitter handles on this slide.
Thank you.
Twitter handles: @DrHidson, @SunderlandUni
Sara Morris - Senior Lecturer, Annie Bjerre - Lecturer, Jesrine Clarke-Darrington - Learning Technologist and Catherine Tattersall - Lecturer, Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield, England
Improving sustainability and inclusivity by digitising clinical exams across health disciplines
Q How can we streamline our practical clinical examinations making the experience better for everyone?
A Let’s digitise the exam templates, be paperless and get feedback to students quickly
Q What online platform will be free and easy to use on laptops and tablets?
A Pebblepad will work
Q Shall we trial the templates in our next practice clinical exam and see what the students think?
A What did our students say – “Instant, structured feedback meant we knew how to improve on the same day” “The feedback template was clear, concise and easy to follow”
Q Shall we try trial our project in a formal exam setting, with our clinicians marking to see if its user friendly?
A What did the clinicians say - “the process was easy and paperless", "the technology calculated the results there and then” “the interface was intuitive”
Q We are in a global pandemic, how can we manage our practical clinical exams?
A Lets rollout our project work and share our knowledge and expertise across the health disciplines.
Thank you for listening
Twitter handles: @ShefSNM, @HCS_Sheffield, @sheforthoptics, @HumanandHealth
Dr. Ana Angelova Volponi and Melanie Nasseripour, Lecturers in Regenerative Dentistry Education, King's College, University of London, England
Assessment for Learning to Foster Reflective Practice for Undergraduate Dental Students
Assessment for learning utilises feedback to improve student performance. At the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral Craniofacial Sciences Kings’ College London, we have online assessments and a cohorts of 180 students, undergoing transition from school to university in year 1.
Using the assessments as tools for learning and fostering the process of self-management among students is therefore challenging. In response to this challenge, we have designed, delivered and evaluated a new approach of tailoring learning through formative assessment and dialogic feedback. Students become actively involved in the learning process, gain confidence and engage in self-reflection essential for their reflective practice development.
Twitter handles: @kingsdentistry, @KingsCollegeLon
Terry Filer, Associate Professor, Swansea University, Wales
Virtual Case Studies for Assessment Preparation and Practice
Hi I'm Terry Filer and I've been using virtual reality (VR) in my teaching at Swansea University for many years. However, I had a dilemma how could I adopt virtual reality for online learning during the lockdown?
Well what I did was produce 360 degree videos that could be viewed through VR headsets or on a flat screen so students could immerse themselves in the exercise.
In this case, in the role as auditors visiting clients premises to check audit inventory at a gokarting business. This formative assessment was thoroughly enjoyed by the level 6, final year UG students in their audit seminar class where 70% stated it was an enjoyable experience and 65% found it an effective learning approach .
If you would like to find out more about this innovative approach to assessment please follow the link provided.
Twitter handles: @FilerTerry, @SwanseaUni
Charlie Clarke-Bland - Teaching Associate and Dr Joanne Gough - Lecturer in Biosciences, Aston University, England
Problem Solving Assessment Support for Blended Learning Environments
Jo: Charlie are you ready?
Charlie: I'm here Jo, just trying to get my camera working
J: (to the audience) What do you do when you're faced with a problem? Do you panic?
C: panicking I don't know what to do
J: do you procrastinate?
C: maybe we could do this another day?
J: Or do you rise to the challenge?
C: Oh it's OK switches camera on I've fixed it
J: We're each faced with problems every day, especially in Science-related careers
C: so in Biosciences at Aston University we teach problem solving skills to prepare students for challenges they may face in the work place
J: This could be as a researcher, in a medical career or perhaps teaching
C: We have adapted an assessment for our final year students that gives them the opportunity to apply their problem solving skills to real-life scenarios
J: We ask them questions such as: What are the ethical considerations around using pesticides?
C: And how would you interpret these different kinds of data
J: and in response to the UK lockdown we implemented additional support measures to allow for varied remote learning circumstances
C: introducing variety into the assessment, accommodates for different learning styles, and assesses high level learning skills like creativity and reflection
J: it also contributes to our high student employability rating
C: You can find info on how we deliver and support this assessment in our addition resources section
J: and email us if you’d like more information
Twitter handles: @charlieAQP, @Rosieoj, @astonuniversity, @astonhls, @astonbioscienc
Roger Saunders, Associate Professor, De Montfort University, England
Marketing business scenario simulation
As part of a first-year marketing module, aimed at non-marketing students, we created an assessment based on a notional business: fashion or jewellery retailer, cinema, coffee shop or manufacturer of bottled water, breakfast cereal, cheese or haircare products. Each chosen because there was a Mintel report available through the University library and plenty of other resources online. Students worked in groups of 4 or 5 and over 16 teaching weeks they held 6 board meetings, during seminars, in which they discussed a range of marketing decisions that were then uploaded and for each they received feedforward that they could use to improve their ideas prior to the final assessment. They were also given a mark of 1, 2 or 3 depending on how much they had understood and how appropriate and well-justified their decision was. The marks were published cumulatively after each decision so students could compare themselves with other businesses in the same category, introducing a competitive element to reflect commercial reality, with prizes for the best performing groups at the end of the year.
Twitter handles: @Roger0907959853, @dmuleicester
Dr Sofia Barbosa Boucas - Senior Lecturer (Education) in Psychology and Dr Pauldy Otermans - Lecturer (Education) in Psychology, Brunel University London, England
The use of rubrics for marking and feedback
Our challenge was to design assessments that would still meet the learning outcomes but were adequate for the new, online learning environment.
In the Psychology Undergraduate Programmes at Brunel we created a rubric template for each year that is adaptable to each individual assessment, not too specific and not too general. The goal was to provide good quality feeding-forward feedback.
The rubric consists of 4 sections:
1. A rubric matrix that includes the relevant criteria for that assessment against the different grade descriptors from “outstanding (A*)” to “unacceptable (F)”.
2. Written feedback with three strengths and three areas for improvement.
3. A statement that includes the name and contact of the marker and the relevance to contact them (whether it is critical or a nice to-do).
4. and Further sources of support that are applicable to the students’ work.
Twitter handles: @PauldyOtermans, @SBarbosaBoucas, @Bruneluni, @BrunelPsy
Dr Margaret MacDougall, Medical Statistician and Researcher in Education (Senior Lecturer), University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Assessment for learning: Medical students gaining confidence and competency as producers of statistics
Assessment Context
- Year 3 medical students at the University of Edinburgh pursuing BMedSci intercalated honour degree
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All statistics teaching and assessment delivered online in response to COVID-19 pandemic
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1st year of open-book statistics exam: interpretation and reporting of statistics based on data analysis
Objectives
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Replacing non-reflective speed test approach to assessing statistics in original research skills exam
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Instilling statistical rigour to avoid perpetuation of statistical misunderstanding in high ranking clinical journals
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Making medical students confident and competent as consumer and producers of statistics in preparation for clinical practice
‘Rap Song’
[Background]
History shows a MedStats need / For a clear assessment lead / Answering stats was once a squeeze / New exam; they write with ease
[Solution]
It’s the Year 3 BMedSci / Where the students really try / In an open-book exam / To avoid the need to cram
[Expected Outcome]
Future doctors with stats rigour / It’s integrity, don’t snigger / Can’t make stats exams a fake / There are patients’ lives at stake
[Future Assessment Plans]
Thinking on their own was clear / But the time is drawing near / To restrict the time to write / Grading standards must be right
Twitter handles: @MargMacD, @EdinUniUsher, @EdinUniMedicine, @EdinburghUni
Ian Towle, Senior Teaching Fellow, University of Strathclyde, Scotland
Transforming Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) to online format
Hi It's Ian Towle from the School of Pharmacy at the University of Strathclyde. How can you assess over 530 pharmacy undergraduate students from four different years using the online OSCE? That was the very question that we asked ourselves, but you know we managed to do that!
You may have some experience with OSCEs, but these are multi station assessments, allowing us to test class objectives and direct observation of student performance.
So what we needed to was to transform an in-person exam hall type of exam to an online virtual format, allowing us to test verbal knowledge and skills using Zoom and written knowledge and skills using virtual online learning platform Moodle.
We tested the 530 students across all four years and involved 28 members of staff testing communication skills and we created seven to eight written communication stations for each year.
Overall there was a 93% pass rate and 59% mean with a really good staff engagement and was really well received by students and staff and much less stressful. An excellent experience. I hope you enjoyed that. Thank you.
Twitter handles: @StrathScience, @StrathMPharm, @SIPBS_Strath, @UniStrathclyde
Suzanne Faulkner, Teaching Fellow in Prosthetics and Orthotics, University of Strathclyde, Scotland
Using OneNote to create digital escape rooms
Have you ever used an escape room where you get locked in a room with lots of clues which you need to solve an order to escape, usually within a fixed time period?
Well, I was very inspired by Rachelle O’Brien’s use of OneNote to create digital escape rooms.
So, for my first years studying prosthetics and orthotics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow I created a formative assessment, with the help of Rachelle.
We used Zoom to do this, the students were put into breakout rooms to work through the escape room in their groups. And, as I said, it was a formative assessment I’ll show you what this looks like.
So you can see that there's 10 rooms, the students have to work through the questions in each room and the answers to the questions in each of the rooms is the password to pass on to the next room.
I tweeted about this, and it inspired my colleagues at the University of Strathclyde to find out more about it and thankfully, I was able to ask Rachelle for help and she agreed to provide some training for us, which meant the use of digital escape rooms at Strathclyde has exploded as more people have been using them.
If you'd like to find out more about it, please don't hesitate to get in contact with me thank you very much take care, bye.
Twitter handles: @SFaulknerPandO, @StrathBiomedEng, @UniStrathclyde
Steve Cook, Professor, Swansea University, Duncan Watson, Professor, University of East Anglia, England
Pioneering Research-Driven Learning and Assessment in Quantitative Methods
Supporting references can be found here:
Solving the quantitative skills gap: a flexible learning call to arms!
Flipping the classroom: is it the type of flipping that adds value?
Twitter handles: @SwanseaUni, @uniofeastanglia
Dr Amy Wai Yee Wong, Doctor of Philosophy, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland
Co-designing an Interdisciplinary Roadmap to Support Academic and Practice Assessors
Hello assessors and examiners, we haven’t forgotten you during these challenging times. My name is Amy Wong, and I am a research fellow at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast. We very much appreciate your role to ensure our graduates are competent. To support the assessment process, we co-designed an interdisciplinary assessor support roadmap.
I am keen to share with you the key ideas. First of all, develop mutual understanding of assessment terminology through a Community of Practice and partnerships with students. This will involve dialogic feedback, peer mentoring & observation to enable evaluation and reflection.
Harnessing of energy from assessment champions to provide scenario-based training.
Make the best use of technology to create a digital assessment hub, as well as providing assessors with psychometric insights.
It is also very important to celebrate success.
Scan the QR code or visit the link to find out more. We hope you will engage with us and be part of this journey. Thank you.
Twitter handles: @amywong_wy, @QUBSONM, @QUBelfast
Aparajita Dey-Plissonneau - Assistant Professor and Alan Smeaton - Professor of Computing, Dublin City University, Dublin
Formative assessment for Telecollaboration, facilitated by the L2L platform
(School of Applied Language & Intercultural Studies & Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Dublin City University)
Aparajita Dey-Plissonneau (ADP): My name is Aparajita Dey-Plissonneau and I teach French in Dublin City University.
Alan Smeaton (AS): And I’m Alan Smeaton, also from Dublin City University.
ADP: We have been doing telecollaboration using Zoom calls where students in Ireland and in France interact with each other, and learn about the target language and culture while interacting with their peers in a fun and relaxed manner.
AS: We use the Zoom transcript facility to analyse the conversations automatically. We then present it visually covering individual participation rates, share of conversation and overall conversation metrics.
ADP: Through formative peer and self-reviews, students reflect on their level of participation and engagement, develop 21st century skills and are more mindful of what, why, and how they are learning via telecollaboration.
AS: Students found the weekly visualisations to be really fun and engaging! They also gained confidence and they made new friends in the learning process
Twitter handles: @asmeaton, @insight_centre, @adp_dey, @DCU
Professor Deirdre Campion, Professor, University College Dublin, Dublin
Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to create effective and authentic online assessments
Have you ever considered how your vet learns about different drugs they can prescribe and that veterinary drugs are not the same in every country?
I teach Veterinary Pharmacology, and my students are from Ireland, Europe and North America.
I apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles in my module design. With the pandemic, I replaced a final MCQ with a summative open-book online assessment for completion in 2-3 hours. It included multiple parts based on realistic animal treatment scenarios.
To accommodate all of my students across the globe, I made the final assessment available for 24 hours, with no enforced time limit.
One component required students to decide an appropriate drug treatment and drug advice for owners based on published information. The students could use information sourced in their own country making this much more relevant to international students.
Overall the module assessment strategy resulted in very positive student feedback. Because of this success, alignment with UDL principles, and our institution’s widening access goals, I plan to continue this format in the coming year and when University fully returns to normal.
Twitter handles: @deirdrecampion, @UCDforALL, @ucdvetmed
James Gallen, Associate Professor in the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin
Eportfolios as Reflective Assessment of Social Justice
I love memes and I teach social justice. In 2020 my course assessment combined both. My name is James Gallen and I teach law in Dublin City University. In recent years I have used an eportfolio as a form of reflective assessment for first year law students. This platform enables students to add multimedia content, including social media, to a basic web page. As a reflective tool, using this platform assisted students in examining social justice within my Critical Approaches to Law module and across their first year law program. Students were tasked with reflecting on whether and how their views of law have changed in light of the reading and discussions in this module and were encouraged to consider their own position and context in doing so. DCU supported this approach and I was able to draw on existing eportfolio assessment rubrics to evaluate students. But the best part was the memes.
Twitter handles: @jamesgallen, @lawgovDCU
Mercedes Carbayo Abengozar, Lecturer and Assistant Professor, Maynooth University, Ireland
Language and Culture Social Novels are fun!
I am presenting an example that I did for final year students of Spanish Literature. In order to address the question of “What is literature for?” “Why literature?” “Why do we have to do this?” “Why do we have to read?”
What I did was to present them with a social novel in the form of a graphic novel so they could see how it worked. We studied that together and then what I did was to ask them to create in groups a social novel, identifying as it says in the learning outcomes one of the particular issues they were interested in contemporary Spanish society. By interpreting the novel that we had been working on in class, they have to create their own novel using some online platforms in order to do it in a graphic way. And this is what they have come with. I have 2 examples to show you.
One of this is an extract of a novel based on the rise of populism in Spain in the late years with the right-wing parties coming up in the Spanish political arena and the second one is about some of the effects that emigration has on women when they emigrate to particular different cultures.
It has been amazing. After the creation of the novel and presentation in oral form to the rest of the class (in Spanish), they had to do a reflective document. I have been very happy to know that all of them have thoroughly enjoy it and the fear they had at the beginning to create something like that became something absolutely delightful for them and for me. So, it has been a great example of how to teach and how to understand how literature work and a creative form of assessment.
Thank you very much.
Twitter handles: @CarbayoMercedes, @MaynoothUni
Orla Fenelon, Senior Technical Officer in Chemistry, Maynooth University, Ireland
The use of video presentation by student science teachers in the assessment of chemistry experiments.
Chemistry experiments are visual, hands on and traditionally take place in the lab. My name is Orla Fenelon and I work in the chemistry department in Maynooth University Ireland.
We asked 4th year student teachers to present a chemistry experiment to their peers. Normally this takes place in the lab but, this year and following strict guidelines, student were permitted to come to the lab to video themselves performing the experiment.
At home they used this material to create a video presentation which was uploaded to MS Teams. The videos were watched by their peers and me with a subsequent online question and answer session. Both the video and the question session were graded for assessment
The assessment was a great success. Not only did the students learn about the experiments, they created a resource that they could use in their future teaching. The feedback from the students was positive so we hope to keep this form of assessment for next years class.
Thank you very much for listening.
Twitter handle: @MaynoothChem
Aidan Mooney, Lecturer and Researcher, Maynooth University, Ireland
Analysis of an automated feedback and assessment system for first year computer science modules
Hi everybody. Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh siad, a motto that I use in my teaching and in particular the feedback that I give to my students. Timely feedback is paramount to student understanding and success. This project looks at an automated feedback and assessment system used within a first-year undergraduate computer science student cohort, as they learn coding in a remote setting.
The system is used for both summative and formative assessment. Each week summative lab questions are loaded in advance and students can work on them in their own time. Test cases are built within the system to check the student's submissions and tailored feedback is provided if the submission is not fully correct. Students can work on their submissions until the deadline each week and use the tailored feedback to improve their work. The test cases are built to look at the content of the student code as well as the output from their code.
Students appreciate the support offered by the system and find the system supports them as they learn within computer science.
After the weekly labs are graded a tailored email is sent to each individual student. Depending on their grade within that specific lab, specific supports or additional materials are suggestive to the student.
Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh siad.
Twitter handles: @aodhanomaonaigh, @mooney_aidan, @MaynoothUni
Marian Crowley-Henry, Associate Professor, Maynooth University, Ireland
Remote Group Consultancy Report: Group Assessment for Class Size of over One Thousand First Year Undergraduate Business Students.
Marian: Would you like to hear about how we designed a group assignment for a class of over one thousand first year undergraduate Business students, which moved entirely online due to COVID-19?
Marian: I’m Dr Marian Crowley-Henry,
Jon: I’m Dr Jon Gruda,
Julius: I’m Dr Julius Nyiawung.
Julius: And we are the teaching team on the Organisational Behaviour and Management class at Maynooth University School of Business, Ireland.
Jon: We randomly allocated students into groups of 7 based on one of three defined- and student- selected topics. All information was shared online.
Marian: The brief for each topic was the same. Consider a theory related to that topic, describe it, and finally relate it to a real-life situation in an organisation of your choice.
Julius: A consultancy style report with guidelines for the groups to include sections on theory, practical work connection, and organisational recommendations was required.
Marian: Would we use a similar approach again?
Jon: Absolutely! We find that working on group assignments really helps students connect the dots between theory and practical application AND prepares them for teamwork in the professional world.
Marian, Jon, Julius: Thanks for listening!
Twitter handles:@marianchenry, @learn2upgrade, @MU_Business
Dr Moynagh Sullivan, Associate Professor, Maynooth University, Ireland
Peer Reflection Journal Assessment Of/For/As Learning
1. Overview:
Hello from Maynooth University in Ireland where my pandemic assessment was in our Literatures of Engagement MA in English
2. Aims and Objectives:
Engagement comes in part from mirroring each other when we are together. How could we enhance mirroring in a virtual space?
3. Activity:
With a peer reflection activity –worth 20% --all learners had to do was participate
It had 3 stages:
Written Reflection on material
Mirror a peer’s reflection
Feedback and FeedForward in discussion
4. Outcome:
Everyone participated to honour their commitments and learners showed enhanced skills in subsequent assignments
5. Impact:
Students loved it because it:
countered the isolation of online learning
enhanced awareness of own learning style and voice
boosted sense of trust, safety and confidence to take intellectual risks
Physical dis-engagement became virtual engagement
So a BIG THANK YOU to the dedicated students who created this community!
6. Future of Project:
Yes! it was so moving to see the care for each other’s work, deep learning was supported. We engaged! I’d do it again!
Twitter handles:@MaynoothEnglish, @MaynoothUni, @MU_DTL, @MUFacultyofArts
Ceila Popovic, Director of Teaching Commons, York University, Canada
Book Reviews as Authentic Assessment
Hello, I am Celia Popovic, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, York University, Toronto, Canada.
Do you like reading? Do you like reading campus novels? My challenges was to combine literature, education, and authentic assessment, teaching online in a pandemic. I teach a course that looks at the way Higher Education is represented through literature, specifically the Campus Novel. Traditionally I would have asked students to write an essay as part of their assessment. And so, 25 students would spend, what, 5 to 10 hours each writing an essay that I would then read, grade, and that would be that. Instead, the students wrote book reviews, those book reviews have been published on an openly accessible website. So now, everyone can benefit from that website, including you. So, if you want to find your next book to read that’s about education: get yourself over to the website and take advantage of my students’ work!
Twitter handles: @celia_popovic, @YorkUniversity, @yorkueducation
Kristine Pedernal - Professor, Andria Phillips - Assistant Professor and Pat Bradley - Assistant Professor ,York University, Canada
Virtual Escape Rooms for Formative Assessment of Nursing Students' Knowledge, Skill, and Judgement
Hello! My name is Kristine. I’m joined by Andria and Pat. And we are all from the School of Nursing at York University.
This is our experience creating virtual escape rooms with a focus on assessment of nursing students in years 2, 3, and 4.
Imagine being an undergraduate nursing student learning online during a pandemic and trying to stay engaged in the learning process...
Do you feel like students want to escape the virtual learning environment?
Escape rooms are based on the concept of cooperative gameplay and encourages participants to work together to solve puzzles and achieve the common goal of escaping the room.
We moved this strategy to the virtual learning environment.
This is an example of a virtual escape room that we created using Google products.
A team of students search the room for digital links that lead to the puzzles that they need to solve. The answer from each puzzle provides part of the code to unlock the room and escape.
We are committed to the importance of using a virtual escape room foundation that informs the development, implementation, and assessment.
We have used virtual escape rooms for formative and summative assessment with positive feedback from students.
We learned that Virtual Escape Rooms were an excellent way to assess and evaluate student learning and for them to self-assess their knowledge, skills, and judgement.
Virtual escape rooms are innovative, interactive, and FUN!
We want to create more virtual escape rooms in the future...
Our final message here is that you can do it too!
Thank you!
Twitter handles: @YorkUHealth, @yorkuniversity
Torrey Trust, Associate Professor of Learning Technology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Ungrading in Teacher Education Courses
Imagine if through your assessment strategies your students not only learn course content but also discover what education is truly about. This is something one of my undergraduates discovered this semester, when she mentioned that education is actually about learning and not just about getting good grades, which as she mentions, “sounds so simple,” but was really a missing piece of many of her college courses. So how did I get this student to this point at the end of the semester? I tried out Ungrading, inspired by Jesse Stommel’s incredible work. As you can see in this image from Jesse Stommel’s blog, grades are not good incentive, they are not good feedback, and they are not good markers of learning. So what did I do? I changed my assessment approach. I shifted from grading to feedback. I gave students the opportunities to apply what they learned by engaging in design projects, getting feedback from me, from the TA, from their friends and family, and from the broader public and then revise their work based on the feedback. At the end of the semester, they used that feedback and their own reflection on their learning experiences to self-grade and recommend a grade to me based on their learning this semester. In my graduate level course, here’s how I do this. I give them a prompt at the end of the semester where they design a course reflection paper, video, or audio product, they answer a number of questions, and then they self-grade based on a rubric. I have numbers at the top of the rubrics but students can decide how many points they’ve earned for each of the rubrics. It’s a fully open process and I trust my students to make the right decisions. For my undergraduate students, they need a little bit more structure, so I give them this form to fill out. I give them points for the design projects, just for completing them. And, then there’s 30 points open to self-grading based on their effort, professionalism, and learning. And they complete this form along with an extensive self-reflection. So, if you’re interested in Ungrading, check out Jesse Stommel’s work. Just do a quick Internet search and you will find a lot of great resources. To wrap up, “you can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both,” one of my favorite quotes by Brene Brown. I encourage you to choose courage and break out of your comfort zone and try this Ungrading approach to assessment. You can start small and I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.
Twitter handles: @torreytrust, @umasseduc, @UMassAmherst
David Villarreal Zegarra , Researcher, Instituto Peruano de Orientación Psicológica, Peru
Networking for researchers
See document on map.
Twitter handles: @dvillarrealz, @ipopsperu
Ciro Rodriguez Rodriguez, Professor, National University Mayor de San Marcos, Peru
Inclusive Socio Reflexive Method
Are you hungry for knowledge?
Yes, students are. So, to be successful, we have developed a method – a Socio Reflexive Method.
What is the objective of the method? The objective of the method is to get competencies and competitiveness in the students.
So how will we do that? We will do it with autonomous learning; we will do it with critical thinking, and we will do it with readiness for learning. This socio-reflexive method is applied to understand the real world, what we have in our environment and how we can model software. The results are spectacular! We can get and understand the importance of modelling.
Nellie El Enany, Assistant Professor, The American University, Cairo
Student Produced Podcasts: Entrepreneurial Leadership and Critical Global Issues
Hello everyone, welcome to our podcast. This is Mahmoud Ayman, Mohamed Ibrahim, Mohamed Gamal and Mohamed Ramadan, students from the American University of Cairo, studying finance, economics, marketing and mechanical engineering. In this podcast we will be discussing the fourth goal on the United Nations (UN) Agenda for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs, which is quality education.
00:22-00:43 seconds – Nellie El Enany audio:
You just heard a snippet from a student produced podcast, an enriching learning and assessment method. They offer an opportunity for students to learn a number of skills, useful for future employability, including researching and analysing information, improved memory retention, team bonding and increased pronunciation and fluency. You can also task students to interview a relevant guest speaker, which you will hear in the next snippet.
00:44-00:60 – Student audio:
We are here to discuss a critical global issue which is water scarcity and the role of entrepreneurs that they play in tackling this issue. Hellen Elizondo from the Thirst Project will also be joining us - If you support water, it will end so many other things.
Twitter handles: @AUC_Business, @AUC
Hilary Thurling, Lecturer, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Teddies and Tupperware
This is an example of how we taught and formatively assessed students clinical skills, remotely during the pandemic. We asked the students to send in videos of themselves conducting a prescribed taught skill using household props. Formative feed back was then to the student given via video. Everyone had fun and learnt.
(video posted with consent from the student)
Dr. Diana Alljahromi, Director of Unit for Teaching Excellence and Leadership, University of Bahrain, Bahrain
Sustaining a culture of academic integrity during COVID-19 using feedback on multiple submissions on SafeAssign
Hello or Al Salam Alaikom as we greet here. This is Dr. Diana Aljahromi from the kingdom of Bahrain which is an island in the Arabian Gulf and this is its red and white flag. I am the Director of the Unit for Teaching Excellence and Leadership at the University of Bahrain which is the only governmental university here
How has Covid 19 impacted the academic integrity in Higher education assessment? How reliable and valid are the results we receive NOW as instructors? What about authenticity versus plagiarism? Educationists and practitioners in academia have always strived to combat plagiarism and enhance learners’ awareness and implementation of academic integrity. Amidst the outbreak of COVID-19, decision-makers and teachers in academia have been facing an exalted level of academic dishonesty while administering online assessment and have attempting to combat plagiarism using certain methods and techniques. Thus, for my final project course, an academic integrity framework that recognized different plagiarism types in light of online teaching and learning was established. First, students were sent an Academic Integrity policy developed for the course. Then, students were given the opportunity to submit unlimited drafts on the LMS BB, all of which were checked against plagiarism and similarity reports generated using SafeAssign. Upon each submission, students received feedback and were given instructions on how to summarise, paraphrase, quote, cite and redraft. This significantly increased the average of AI of the projects in comparison to those submitted in previous courses and from their earlier submissions. Also, the quality of academic writing was significantly enhanced. Mission accomplished.
Twitter handles: @QAOARTSUOB, @uobedubh
Dr. Neesha Khan Malik, Doctor of Education, Bahrain Teachers College, University of Bahrain, Bahrain
Creative Assessment for Quality Education
A Question of Assessing Year three College Students
(A poem)
A picture is worth a thousand words!
If this picture is worth a thousand words,
among those is a question.
A question that has baffled, bewildered, and befuddled
every teacher, student, school, and community!
It’s the convoluted confounded confusing question of how to assess students
who have all this while studied a course across more than a mile?
How about designing an alternative assessment?
Instead of two hours sit in exam, how about students show learning on a blog?
To apply their critical reading skills, let students select from genres of literature!
From symbolism, simile, syntax, to synecdoche,
From paradox, pun, personification, to proverb
From anaphora, antithesis, allusion, to apostrophe
Prioritize student preferences and learning styles.
Allow me to present a plan, a plan for creative assessment!
A plan full of fun over two months span.
A rubric for individual and team skills,
To question analysis and presentation skills,
And also to measure reflection ability.
As teachers we must model creativity
To make even testing an interesting activity!
Twitter handles: @neeshamalik3, @btc_uob
Dr Mar de Fez Laso, Professor and Program Lead, American University of Bahrain, Bahrain
Conceptual changes to mathematics teaching to improve student learning & reduce academic integrity violations
Hello from Bahrain. What is the best cocktail to ensure achievement? Online examinations and free and easily accessible software answering almost any question. This is what I had in Mathematics so I created new questions in my exams.
• Questions containing the words “why and/or how”
• Questions on the questions themselves
• Conceptual questions
• Questions presented through words or images
Certainly the cheating was reduced because the average score of student went from 100% to 47%. This method has got many benefits and why is it here to stay because now in my teaching I
• Focus on concepts and establishing connections
• Students develop abstraction and critical thinking skills
• Mathematics software used for learning
• Applicable to other areas
• Best prepared graduates ever
• Happy teachers
And look at my smile!
Twitter handle: @AUBH_Bahrain
Dr Maryam Almahdi, Assistant Professor, Ahlia University, Bahrain
Virtual Walkthroughs: A Method of Formative Assessment
Are you guys familiar with video game walkthroughs?
In walkthroughs, a main player will be playing a video game; broadcasting their gameplay in real-time and chatting a long, while an audience engages in lively discussions about the game. We can see this in all sorts of games, from fight games to scrabble. In addition to offering audiences engagement and sociability, such walkthroughs mainly help gamers and viewers learn more about the game from one another.
I applied walkthroughs as a method of formative assessment in my digital marketing class, which was introduced virtually during COVID-19. But what do digital marketing concepts have in common with video games?
Well, an understanding of digital marketing is heavily dependent on understanding the customer’s online journey. Similarly, videogame walkthroughs are all about following the gamer’s journey from start to end. So, applying walkthroughs as a method of assessment sees a student demonstrating their understanding of a certain online experience by walking the class through it, in real-time, using the screen sharing option. I used this method to assess students’ understanding of search intent or barriers to conversion among others.
Twitter handle: @ahliauniversity
Sharon Nicklin, Clinical Educator in Obs and Gynae, RCSI Bahrain, Bahrain
Gamefication of SC1 Obstetrics
Meet Sharon
And some Medical Students
Almost Doctors
But still, Lots to learn!
They needed to embed the knowledge
I had a quiz on paper
Wanted something new!
So I made a game online
It was fun!
Results as they finished
It helped them remember
And unexpectedly
Their summative grades improved
And the students loved it
"An Episiotomy is the first part of managing a shoulder dystocia- true or false?"
"How many cms dilated would a woman be if you could insert 2 fingers in her cervix"
"Join my Quiz"
"Overall impression of CTG in one word"
'You are called to the ER for a woman in labour. As you approach you see vertex visible and advancing rapidly. What do you do?"
"Yes honestly it was a great way to revise what we covered throughout the week!"
"I think you should continue using it for the upcoming groups! Thanks, Kind regards"
"Dear "Mrs Sharon, YES absolutely!!! Not only was it fun, but it was REALLY beneficial and useful"
Future? More Modules, EMQ Revision......
Thank you for watching!
snicklin@rcsi-mub.com
The Gamefication of Obstetrics
Twitter handle: @RCSI_Bahrain
Ebrahim Rajab, Senior Lecturer, RCSI Bahrain, Bahrain
Rethinking continuous assessment in the Covid-19 pandemic
See document on map.
Lisa Riddler, Lecturer in Law, Middlesex University, Dubai
Bridging the gap
The students are no longer 3rd year LLB Law students; they are trainee solicitors/lawyers. I am now a Supervising Partner, not a lecturer. We are no longer on Campus; we are in an Office opposite the Burj Al Arab! Formative assessment becomes a series of real world tasks to be completed virtually.
Task 1: Observe a client interview; trainees take notes on the information elicited - identify legal issues and ethical considerations too
Task 2: A memorandum is received from the Partner: trainees will research the Law.
Task 3: Respond to the memorandum and advise the supervising Partner through application of relevant Law.
Task 4: Re-enter the client interview; ‘trainees’ watch the supervising Partner provide advice to the client on all issues. Time to check their own understanding and reflect upon the process.
This process bridges the gap between theory and practice. Formative assessment outcomes remain the same, constructive alignment is maintained; but the students gain an insight into the role of a trainee lawyer too. They see the Law come to life and begin to appreciate the other skills they will need to develop as they prepare for their future. A practical and engaging approach which I will continue to implement as we navigate our new normal.
Twitter handles: @lisa_riddler, @MiddlesexDubai
Claudia L. Maher, Lecturer, Middlesex University, Dubai
Theatre of Change
Did you know that public speaking is one of the most influential but most dreaded forms of communication?
Hello, my name is Claudia Maher and I am a lecturer in Human Resources at Middlesex University Dubai. I teach 3rd year business and psychology students in a module which introduces theories and models of change management.
The original assessment for this module required students to create a theatre production showcasing the students’ knowledge of these models and reflections.
With preparation and persistence this assignment eliminates the inhibitions associated with performing in front of an audience, the experience of which can help them be more prepared for public speaking in the future.
However the Covid pandemic meant that we were unable to present the productions on campus. Accordingly, students presented their virtual theatre productions using YouTube. The videos incorporated skills such as singing, acting and also using bitmoji’s to illustrate their experiences.
Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy watching the student videos
Twitter handles: @ClaudiaMaher, @MiddlesexDubai
Dr Rashna Hoshang Sukhia, Assistant Professor, Aga Khan University, Pakistan
Asynchronous formative assessment strategies employed during the COVID 19 pandemic.
I teach Oral Microbiology and Immunology to Associate Science in Dental Hygiene students at the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. Our students belong to remote areas of Pakistan whereby they sometimes have to travel two hours to gain access to internet. Therefore during the COVID 19 pandemic, with our university moving towards online teaching, we had to employ asynchronous modes of teaching and learning. I thereby opted for formative assignments and article summary which was to be written in their own words after thorough research and study. I also assigned Kahoot quizzes and unmarked quizzes embedded in the panopto video recorded presentations, which the students enjoyed! They appreciated this mode of learning and assessment as according to their feedback, it helped them to gather information from different sources and made them think critically!
May Lim, Associate Professor, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore
Oral Interactive Assessment & Involvement of Persons with Disability as Parents
I'm Whee Boon. I'm a Quad Amputee.
I act as a parent with a young child.
My role is to ask students questions about my child's development.
Oral interactive assessment is an excellent way to assess both students' knowledge and their ability to articulate reasoning.
I'm May and I teach in the first year Occupational Therapy programme.
My students are taught about developmental milestones and what is considered typical development.
They are great at answering MCQs and short answers, but when it comes to clinical placements, they cannot converse well with clients, who are parents.
So, our solution is to change our assessment format from a paper-based one to a 10-minutes online oral interactive assessment.
97% of students surveyed feel that this type of assessment has real-world relevance.
We hire and train persons with disabilities to act as parents.
They act as parents with concerns and question the students about milestones.
The professors then concentrate on listening and assessing the quality of the students' answers.
I'm very proud that I can educate our future occupational therapists.
This is a valuable work opportunity that is meaningful to students' learning.
Dr. Ian – Associate Professor, Dr. Mahmood – Senior Lecturer, Dr. Sujan – Associate Professor & Dr. Mahzan – Lecturer, Curtin University, Miri Campus, Malaysia
Team Materials Engineering Educators
See document on map.
Twitter handle: @CurtinUni
Phitsinee Koad, Professor, Walailak Univesity, Thailand
Learner Autonomy and Consultations Integrated Assessment
Hello from Thailand
I want to share with you the method I use to access my students.
I integrate learner autonomy with consultations to assess their learning.
What you need to do is asking your students questions.- Have them evaluate their learning.
- Ask them how they feel.
- Ask them if there's any struggle.
- What are their causes?
- How would they deal with it?
It's important to have them come up with solutions to their problem themselves.
As a teacher, we will be there to encourage them, give them advice, and supports in time of need.
With this method, we could foster them wonderful life skills.
They could also apply it to all kinds of problems they may encounter in their current situation and in the future.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phimphaka Harding, Associate Professor, Walailak Univesity, Thailand
Collaborative Skills on Digital Platform
See document on map.
Twitter handles: @FuntechC, @Walailak_U
Nikolas Ettel, Lecturer, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
24 Frames in 24 Lines
A 60-sec elevator conversation about the pandemic teaching format of the Common Core Course 24 Frames: Communicating Ideas through Film.
Cathi (already in the elevator): Hey Nik.
Nik: Hey ya. Good to see you again.
Cathi: Tell me, how was your film course last semester? Given the pandemic; you must have had over a hundred students distributed all over the world; don’t you?
Nik: Yes.
Cathi: What was your secret?
Nik: Well, luckily, most of our students were in Asia, so we haven’t had much troubles with different time zones, but my team and I had to completely rearrange the film making procedure into different online stages – so one stage was only about brainstorming, another about task distributing for filming, post production, and so on...
Nik: So, each group has thereby chosen a film from our list; all similar, actually, to previous semesters, but this time, we have asked them to produce a film poster instead of a trailer.
Cathi: A different form of visual communication, isn’t it?
Nik: Correct. This helped my students to focus on their storyboards, their image boards and
distilled everything into a 3 min short film.
Cathi: So, I remember, last time, all of them focused on Hong Kong, right?
Nik: Correct; but next semester, we would like to bring each of the student’s hometowns more into their final short film.
Cathi: Alright; that’s me. Thanks for the insights Nik. Please invite me again to your student’s screenings.
Nik: Thanks. Will do.
Twitter handle: @hkulandscape
Cesar Ortega-Sanchez, Associate Professor, Curtin University
Adapting Face-to-Face Electrical Systems Labs for Online Delivery: Lessons Learned and the Way Forward
When Covid hit in early 2020, I had to transform my 1st year Electrical Systems labs to fully online delivery.
In face-to-face Labs students do hands-on activities, in pairs, and use instruments to analyse the function of electrical circuits.
Since simulators are a valuable tool in the design and test of electrical and electronic circuits, I chose LTSpice and Tinkercad to replace the use of instruments in the online version of labs. These simulators are very powerful and can be used for free.
In the last 15 months I have delivered different combinations of face-to-face and online labs.
Student experience is a mixture. It greatly depends on personal habits and skills.
I haven’t found any significant differences in the marks of the face-to-face and online versions of the labs. Both seem to be effective.
In conclusion, some aspects of laboratory work can be replaced with online activities. But the hands-on, face-to-face experience should not be completely replaced because it is essential in engineering.
Professor Shelley Kinash, Interim Executive Principal, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
The iASK Tool: Joining-up assessment and employability
How do you (university students) get experience to get a job, without needing the job to get the experience? The answer is the assessment assigned throughout university degrees. iASK is an easy tool to change the way you think about assessment. Divide a piece of paper into four quadrants and draw a circle at the central axis. In the circle, label the assessment type. Then label the other boxes: i for identity, A for Attributes, S for Skills and K for Knowledge. In the identity box, write down what doing this assessment told you about yourself. Next, write about your Attributes. In the Skills box, write down Technical and Super Skills you developed through this assessment. In the Knowledge box, write about the facts you learned through doing this assessment task. Keep these completed iASK records to prepare for job applications and interviews.
Twitter handles: @KinashInAus, @usqedu
Nicholas Osborne, Associate Professor, University of Queensland, Australia
Authentic Assessment in Higher Education
My name is Nick Osborne. We have been doing research on authentic assessment. We believe authentic assessment is an excellent way to test students, but at the same time make them identity-verifiable. Authentic assessment has been around for about 4 decades, but it has not been widely used. But we really believe that it provides job-ready applicants after their postgraduate time with us at the University of Queensland. We have been examining how to best prepare authentic assessment for our students. We assessed this during a course that we ran last year called Public Health in Pandemics, and we found to our great pleasure that many students enjoyed our course that involved authentic assessment and we believed this has prepared the students for the challenges of the brave new world.
Twitter handles: @nosborne36, @uqmedicine
Amanda Daly, Undergraduate Business Program Director, Griffith University, Australia
Interactive Oral Exams
Have you ever wanted an assessment that ticks all of the boxes- student engagement, employability and academic integrity? My name is Amanda Daly and today I’ll show you how Interactive Orals can do this. An interactive oral differs from a viva voce exam; it is based on authentic scenarios and an unscripted conversation. Since assessment is scaffolded and students must interactive live with the teacher, it enhances academic integrity. In my international management course, students acted as a consultant guiding a client through the stages of establishing a business in another country. They participated in a 10-minute semi-structured interview responding to questions based on information in a report they had previously submitted. We examined their knowledge of management practices across cultures, and the ability to communicate ideas effectively.
As the Covid19 pandemic forced online learning and my students returned to their home countries, they were able to successfully complete the course and maintain a personal connection with the teaching team.
We saw improved student engagement across the course, higher results and positive experience for students and staff.
Working with my colleagues, interactive orals have been embedded across many nations. You can find out more through the Sway; one of the HEA resources for this assessment torch.
Twitter handles: @ajdaly28, @GriffithBiz
Assoc. Professor Jo-Anne Chuck, Head of Teaching and Curriculum, Western Sydney University, Australia
Assessment 2020: A Partnership Pedagogy approach
In Australia, our April 2020 lockdown coincided with the new academic year and onboarding new students.
Quickly our staff and students became learners together, working and listening to each other driven by our strong partnership pedagogy.
Our new staff resources such as our Smart Assessment Design Toolkit and On-line learning hub were all shaped by this pedagogy
This resulted in 90% of our invigilated assessments moving to an on- line alternative, including authentic assessment tasks.
Modified policies such as student access to a grade point neutral scheme or being able to withdraw without academic penalty and resources to address academic integrity supported the change.
Today, our students are back on campus as usual, but the culture of teaching and learning has changed for the better.
An important outcome of COVID and the move online at Western is that staff are more skilled and savvy at designing assessments that are better informed by their discipline and aligned with industry and the future of work.
Ayse Aysin Bilgin, Associate Professor, Macquarie University Sydney, Australia
Online Assessment for a Large First Year Statistics Unit: Challenges of COVID-19
Have you ever wondered how you can assess more than one thousand students scattered all around the world? I had to do that during covid-19 in a business statistics unit. While doing that, I still wanted to hear the student voice in the assessments, provide timely rich feedback, eliminate logistic problems, discourage academic dishonesty and achieve consistency of marking. Online non-invigilated assessments was the answer for my question, which I developed it to enable different kinds of questions. Specifically, I'm so proud of the last option listed here, which is open ended questions require text answers. In the other questions I listed, I ask students to download a data set, analyze it, enter numerical values or choose from options. With the open ended questions and example given here, students needed to write their answer. The marking was quite easy. I could allocate different versions of the questions to different markers. That way marking consistency was achieved, marking was completed much quickly. No academic dishonesty was identified. So far, no exam paper is lost. Students found it easy to take online assessments. Assessments of student learning was as good as before covid-19. And we are getting there and there's still plenty of room to improve. And there's still opportunities to increase the number of different questions and improve assessments so that students continue learning. Assessment is not the end.
Dr Helen Parker, Lecturer, University of Sydney, Sydney
Students assessing students: equipment-free online practical exams
You go to see your exercise physiologist or kinesiologist, and they will do a number of things, including accurately measuring your height, waist, blood pressure, and conduct some exercise tests – all skills they learned and, at the University of Sydney, were traditionally assessed for competency at an in-person practical exam in the first year of their undergraduate degree in Exercise Physiology.
However, during the COVID lockdown, the commonly used solution of “film yourself and submit a video” wouldn’t work for this exam, partly because students needed access to specialized equipment, but also they needed someone to perform prac skills on, which was impossible if they lived alone!
Before lockdown, our second year undergraduate students had created videos of themselves doing those same practical skills, and many students gave us permission to use their videos for an online practical exam for the first years!
In Canvas Quizzes, the first years applied the practical exam marking criteria to those student videos, with their score in the assessment reflecting how well the grade they had awarded the video matched the grade given by the professors.
This work was presented at our annual teaching symposium to inspire other academics facing similar challenges in 2020, and the plan for the future is to continue using the videos as formative assessment and revision tools - for students to hone their practical skills outside class time, setting themselves up for the rest of their degree and their careers beyond.
Twitter handles:@Helen_M_Parker, @syd_health
Silas Taylor, Researcher, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Online clinical examination of final year medical students
Hi, I’m Silas Taylor, Associate Professor in Medical Education at UNSW Sydney.
When does “no statistical difference” equal great news?
For me it’s when we demonstrated this in outcomes for final year medical student clinical examinations run under COVID restrictions in 2020, compared with exams run in 2019!
As COVID hit in March 2020, we had 280 students to examine so that they could successfully graduate and enter the medical system.
So, we set about converting very much hands-on clinical examinations to a format that would run successfully and robustly online.
Exam stations were adapted so that patient information was provided by using videos or images of patient presentations, allowing us to effectively assess the relevant skills. Meanwhile we also had to ensure all participants could use our chosen online platform.
Meetings, pilots, and training followed.
So back to those research results… analysis compared student performance in the two year’s exams, and across the different disciplines and skill domains examined no meaningful difference in student marks was demonstrated.
In truth, staff were concerned about increased workload, but student feedback was supportive.
Based on this we are in favour of implementing online exams in future, so that we have a clear, robust and sustainable assessment plan which requires little modification in case of future disruption to our clinical training and assessment.
Twitter handles: @SilasTaylor, @UNSW
Dr Lynn Gribble, Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Ensuring integrity with video reflections
Hi everybody, I want to talk to you about authentic assessment,
building real life skills that demonstrate knowledge with integrity.
This was part of the challenge we faced as we moved online.
We have a large course of 500 students. What we wanted to do was in make sure that our assessments tested the Graduate skills of presenting information while demonstrating knowledge. But most importantly, insured integrity. So, our solution was to have video reflections with a transcript, but we ask them to do more. That was to edit and insert references and submit those transcripts to Turnitin. The outcome was the student spoke easily about their learning, even when it was a second language. It highlighted the attribution in citations. And their understanding of that academic process and at the same time it quickly uncovered students that didn't engage well with the materials allowed us to intervene and also pick up any integrity issues.
Twitter handles: @LynnGribble, @UNSW, @unswpvcese
Penny Wheeler, Lecturer (Academic Development), Australian Catholic University, Australia
Design spaces: Building online learning prototypes in a shared LMS space
Think about a workshop. It's somewhere you can concentrate on your own project, but still learn from watching others at work.
You see them use new tools, and you think about what you could do with them.
You see what they make, and watch improvements in design emerge - you can ask someone "Why did you make this change?", and get the benefit of their thinking.
And people make suggestions for your work from their own experience.
All of this is what we want for our university teachers and their development. And so, in our class on technology for learning, staff work in a shared Design Space in the learning management system, each building a project in their own block.
The work is formally assessed, but there's no problem with using what you have learned from others. Peer review is part of the design process, and so is an Open House.
The work from this "workshop" space is always well wrought and well reasoned.
Twitter handles: @pennyjw, @ACUmedia
Carol Hayes, Associate Professor (Japanese Studies), Australian National University, Australia
Vodcasts - Tutorial Discussion Leads
Hello all, minna-san konnichi wa (Hi All).
This is Carol Hayes coming to you live from Radio Assessment at the Australian National University.
Here to give you my pitch on way vod-casting (short 3 minute videos) are a great way of encouraging students to lead tutorial discussion.
So here’s an example;
“Hello, I’m Yuan Pete
And this is Yuan Pete’s ONE PIECE
One piece as a time – LET’S REVIEW THE REAL-LIFE ISSUES here through racism here in the Fishmen story arch”.
And he ends with,
“Stay tuned for more in this space
I’m Yuan Pete and this has been … well you get the joke!
So here a student is using humour to draw his [fellow] students into his discussion of the manga One Piece, to explore the ‘outsider’ status of this pirate crew.
Another example was in my Advanced [Japanese language] course where students were looking at the impact of Covid on life in Australia and Japan, and this student who drew all her own sketches wanted us to think about the comparison between the terms ‘The New Normal’ in Australia and ‘atarashii seikatsu yooshiki’ in Japan.
So, I get them to do these three steps.
Introduce their topic, tell us what caught their eye and then end with this question for the class and it’s been a really dynamic way of getting them to talk.
So, thank you very much
Arigato gozaimashita.
Twitter handles: @CarolHayesANU, @CLT_ANU
Oonagh McGirr, Deputy Chief Executive, Learning and Teaching Services, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand
Credential led In-time teacher training for the practice-based professional: earn as you learn in the workplace
In time teacher training for the practice based professional: bite-sized assessment practice for work based learning
At Otago Polytechnic, we believe that professional practice is key. This is exemplified in our professional development initiative for all teaching staff - emerging and established practitioners, particularly with the core teaching qualification, the Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education
In 2019, we revised our in-house teacher-training programme to embed flexibility and widen access in response to participant feedback; the programme was felt to be too theoretical in focus, took too long to complete and did not reflect the applied practice based nature of the programme portfolio at our institution. We noted also that we had many staff who were keen to upskill and refresh practice, but who did not want to take a full two-year programme again.
We focused on access, progression and achievement by reworking the programme to include core courses for practice, embedding an incremental practice pathway, with the ability to achieve smaller qualifications in real time.
To do this, we assigned microcredentials to each semester-based course (15 credits and 30 credits, levels 5, 6, 7 and 8), switched the facilitation focus to group tutorials to enable transdisciplinary sharing of practice and established a team teaching and assessment ethos. To enable recognition of workplace skills and knowledge, we activated a full and partial independent learning pathway, drawing on Accreditation and Recognition of Prior Learning.
Simply put, when you join us as a (new) teacher from industry, you earn as you learn, drawing on the everyday to complete a work based learning programme within a timescale which is realistic, doable and based on the skills and knowledge you bring to teaching from your professional practice. Our aim is to honour you, your practice and the mana you bring.
The changes have brought improved participant feedback and experience, an increase in learner numbers and a shift to higher completion levels across the board. Our teachers and teacher trainers are happier and our learners benefit from current practice which is micro-credentialed.
Our model has now been picked up by the national VET body, Te Pūkenga-NZIST, with a view to creating a similar pathway for all applied education professionals in Aotearoa-New Zealand.
We are happy to share our practice with you.
Twitter handles: @oonaghmcgirr, @OtagoPolytechnic
Dr Lida Pitsillidou, Lecturer in Law, University of Central Lancashire, England
The use of Vevox as a pedagogical tool to enhance student learning and engagement: the impact of COVID-19
As Benjamin Franklin once said, ‘Tell me and I forget, Teach me and I remember, Involve me and I learn’.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked some of the greatest innovations of the 21st century, as educators were required to take a huge step forward towards adopting more innovative e-learning technologies. This helped me reflect on my current approaches in teaching and sparked my curiosity and interest in implementing an e-learning polling platform named as Vevox during my Company Law lectures with the aim to transform the classroom into an active learning environment, through encouraging all students to participate into discussions with the whole class. With Vevox, I was able to design in advance various multiple-choice-questions which I have used at the end of each lecture through the use of smartphones or other devices to suit a diverse range of students. Implementing such a type of an e-learning activity, has helped students receive sufficient formative feedback during the module, which has enabled them to identify any gaps or misconceptions and improved their performance through reflecting on ‘what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how to improve their learning’ (Lasso, 2010: p.75). Vevox was indeed found to be ‘an effective tool to reach the mix of talents and learning styles’ in a law classroom, allowing me ‘to draft different types of questions to target different types of thinking and thus different types of learners’ (Caron and Gely, 2004: p.566).
Twitter handles: @LidaPitsillidou, @UCLanCyprus
llias Kapareliotis, Associate Professor in Marketing, Deree, The American College of Greece, Greece
The Navarino Challenge
See the short version of llias' transcript on the interactive map or read the long version by clicking the link below.
Lyudmyla Hnapovska, Head of Foreign Languages, Sumy State University, Ukraine
Assessment VOICES” from Sumy State University, Ukraine
Keeping the Thumbs Up!
TO USE Padlet or NOT TO USE?
That WAS the question before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out!
After a year of almost 100% distance learning, the answer IS a firm “YES!”
Why? - Because it breaks a lot of myths about assessment”.
Myth 1. Assessment is boring, frightening, and stressful.
With Padlet assessment is fun. It is colourful, enjoyable, and stress-free.
Myth 2. Assessment is about the teacher who is the only ‘judge’.
With Padlet assessment is collaborative, where the voice of peers contributes and counts.
Myth 3. Assessment is a one-off event strictly tied up to some scheduled place and time.
With Padlet assessment is ongoing and continuing, with everybody doing the tasks at their own pace, from whatever device or place accessible.
Myth 4. Learners have submitted their project or paper? Could they have performed better? N0 chance for them to edit the work!
Forget about this with Padlet! Learners can work with unlimited contributions until they are ready to publish what they are finally happy with!
Myth 5. Passed and forgotten! This is what traditional assessment is often about.
Padlet provides an unlimited source of inspiration and creativity, and enthuses information search, really turning ‘assessment OF learning” into “assessment FOR learning”.
With our ESP students, Padlet puts into practice the VOICES model*, since it helps to make language assessment:
V – varied: it covers many aspects and allows students with different styles & modes to shine
O – ongoing: it gives both teachers and learners a sense of what is happening in the class
I – integrated into everyday learning
C – collaborative: involving other people makes assessment fair, comprehensive, and accurate
E – evidenced: it instantly records and communicates results
S – systematic: it is planned and structured in an organized and regular way
With Padlet we can include the VOICES OF OUR LEARNERS, more significantly in our pedagogy.
As a teacher, keep asking questions about the value of your assessment tools!
This puts you in the best position to USE TOOLS and NOT BE USED BY THEM.
*The model suggested by Dr. Stephen Bax (1960-2017), Professor in Applied Linguistics, CRELLA (Centre for Research in English Language Learning and Assessment), University of Bedfordshire
Twitter handles: @Inmovuabs, @InstituteBiEM, @sumdu_ua
Olga Yashenkova, Associate Professor, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
Creating a Memorable Message
I was inspired by Kurt Lewin who said, ‘There is nothing as practical as a good theory.’ I thought what could be more practical than Communication Theory I teach?! Why not move from theory to practice then?
One way to do so is to use an authentic task, such as ‘Creating a Memorable Message’, which leads to product creation and helps assess a range of skills and abilities to apply the acquired theoretical knowledge into practice. Students are free to choose the topic, the form of presenting their ideas, and how to work. Most preferred to work individually and were willing to demonstrate their creativity and unique ideas. The final score is based on the combination of teacher, self- and peer assessment. None of the students failed. The assessment purpose was achieved.
How do you assess theoretical knowledge? Do you still use traditional tests or exams? Are you ready to take risk and try something new in assessment?
Twitter handles: @OYashenkova, @KyivUniversity
Sigrid Weller, Research and Teaching Assistant, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Integrating a student learning perspective in assessment: exam evaluation with the aid of audience response systems.
Online teaching and virtual exams. How can we reach the students?
My name is Sigrid Weller and I am University assistant in teaching and research at Graz University of Technology in Austria.
I solved this challenge by introducing an Audience Response System for student evaluation of digital exams.
After finishing the exam students receive a Link to evaluate it.
The evaluation consists of feedback on the exam and the students have the opportunity for self-reflection.
The evaluation is anonymous and voluntary. Nevertheless, response rates of over 50% confirm the interest and the appreciation of the students.
The failure rate has been reduced by 12 % in the following exam.
Have I aroused your interest in using Audience Response Systems?
Please follow the Link.
All the best from Graz!
Twitter handle: @tugraz
Wendy Garnham, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Sussex, England
The Active Essay Writing initiative
Why is this cow relevant to my example of excellence in assessment? Because as you may be aware, a cow is known to regurgitate cud as part of its normal digestive process. When faced with the task of writing an essay, students often resort to regurgitating the lecture you gave them, telling you exactly what you told them. How dull…. Not only that but students often do this at the end of term, in a rather rushed fashion.
Our active essay writing programme rewards students for the process as well as the end product using fortnightly tasks starting with asking students to generate their own ideas about the question before they look at the academic literature. They document each stage of the process using creative collages and digital tools.
Student feedback was positive and wow, the essays were so much more interesting to mark. They were now thinking like kingfishers. Why kingfishers? You may not know this but a kingfisher’s beak acted as the inspiration for an engineer at a Japanese rail company to solve a problem with high speed trains. Innovation trumps regurgitation.
What is the moral of the story? Creativity and innovation can be fostered through effective assessment. It pays to be more like the kingfisher than to follow the example of the cow.
Twitter handles: @DrWGarnham, @SussexUni
Professor Vimal Karani, Professor in Nutrigenetics & Nutrigenomics, University of Reading, England
Critical appraisal is the first step in the journey of becoming a competent self-learner
The past two decades have seen significant changes in healthcare globally with a drive to incorporate research evidence into healthcare and to promote evidence-informed practice. Incorporating research evidence into clinical practice and decision-making requires an ability to understand various research designs and their application, and the ability to identify appropriate research evidence to establish its quality and applicability to clinical practice.
Aims & Activity: Critical appraisal is a process involving the assessment and interpretation of evidence. This is a very important skill that every student should acquire during their undergraduate and postgraduate education. Developing critical appraisal in university students is a challenge, given that such skills are generally not promoted in primary and secondary education, leaving many university students with relatively poor reasoning and problem-solving skills. I wanted my students to develop this skill; so, during this pandemic, I used critical appraisal as an assessment where students were provided with a research article and were asked to identify strengths and limitations of the article.
Outcome: Course evaluation revealed that students valued how the activity highlighted the relevance of research literacy for their practice.
Impact: The effort is worthwhile in investing time for becoming better self-learners and updating one’s knowledge and skills. Critical appraisal should be considered as the first step in the journey of becoming a competent self-learner.
Future of the project: I will promote the use of critical appraisal skills to students from other disciplines. It is important that students should be trained not to accept published research studies at face value but to form their own conclusions after critical review. Hence, irrespective of the discipline, every student should develop this skill and it is the responsibility of the University to impart basic skills in this much neglected, but very important area of education.
Twitter handles: @vimalkarani, @UniofReading, @UniRdg_HSU
Dr Emmanuel A Essah, Associate Professor, Construction Management & Engineering, University of Reading, England
A journey with Industry, how can it work for you?
Hello everyone, welcome to the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. My name is Emmanuel Essah. The Torch Bearer initiative I am presenting is developed based on assessment and feedback that is enriched with real-life construction projects, challenges, problem-solving and team-work. Together with staff from the mechanical and electrical departments at Arcadis Limited - a leading global design and consultancy organisation. Students are assessed based on the implementation of concepts through design and build. From a class of 147 students groups are formed and the project which is student led is facilitated by Arcadis staff and myself. Benefits include; students worked with confidence, interpersonal management, organisational and team-work skills – just to mention a few. In addition, students are offered placements opportunities leading to employment. Attached to this page is a detailed transcript as to how the project is run as well as a dedicated brochure designed by Arcadis for further information. Please contact me if you want to know it can work for you. Thank you.
Twitter handle: @SCME_UoR
Fabio R Arico, Associate Professor, University of East Anglia, England
Evaluative Conversations: viva voce assessments
Written assessment in Higher Education is dominant, but our students will have to face job interviews and social interaction in a professional environment. How can we help them?
I advocate for the importance of oral assessment so that we can train our students to analyse and discuss topics orally and sharpen their employability skills.
Moreover, amid concerns raised by the switch to open-book examinations, oral assessments are very hard to plagiarise.
For these reasons, I recently promoted the introduction of viva voce assessment, or evaluative conversations, as I like to call them.
I implement conversations allowing students to book themselves in time slots. Each conversation takes about 15-20minutes and I leave myself 10 minutes to prepare some feedback. Using a marking rubric helps with consistency in marking.
This process can take place online or face to face.
I find viva voce assessment an authentic way to connect with my students and adapt to their needs. You can also link this assessment to others, for instance discussing a written assessment piece that was submitted beforehand.
Please contact me if you want to know more.
Twitter handles: @FabioArico, @uniofeastanglia, @UEA_Economics
Dr Theo Gilbert, Lecturer, University of Hertfordshire, England
The Cognitive Skills of Compassion
Thank you so much for joining me! Theo Gilbert here, University of Hertfordshire.
Here’s some amazing news for you. Compassion, it turns out, is not an emotion. It is instead, a psychobiological motivation, according to the Compassionate Mind Foundation, and neuroscientists and clinical psychologists like them who have been telling us for 20 years about this. It’s a psychobiological motivation to:
Notice distress, not normalise it, in yourself or others and then do something about it.
We can use this in group work. And we’re doing this at University of Hertfordshire where this is being rolled across its five-year strategic plan.
Why? Because we have found so far that it’s really hitting the ‘BAME’ awarding gap. If you’re familiar with inequities of awarding, then please do think about this very carefully. And also we are finding that students are far more willing to reach out and work with students they wouldn’t normally have reached [out] to before. This makes for much more diverse teams – and multiculturalism. If you were to join us, it would be absolutely a joy and coup! [Email: T.1.gilbert@herts.ac.uk ] We do hope you’ll think about it. Thank you so much.
Twitter handles: @TheoGilbert, @uniofHerts
Reza Marvi, Associate Lecturer, Middlesex University, England
Vlogging
See document on map.
Twitter handle: @MiddlesexUni
Fiona O'Brien, Lecturer in Journalism, Kingston University, England
History of journalism - a multimedia blog
See document on map.
Twitter handles: @fiona_obrien, @KingstonSchArt
Georgiana Assadi, Senior Lecturer, University of West London, England
Teaching and Learning within Nurse Education
My name is Georgiana Assadi and I am an SL at UWL.
And this is my contribution to innovating assessments.
I was leading on a level 7 module which aimed to help students transition into becoming registered nurses. It was a module on our PgDip Nursing course, which was delivered at the end of the theoretical programme of study.
Students were asked to create a micro teaching session on a particular skill as detailed by the Nursing and Midwifery council (our regulators), via our VLE (we use blackboard). They also had to submit an evidenced base lesson plan, complete a group engagement feedback form for how they felt they worked together, and individually provide feedback to one of their peers.
From the feedback collected, we saw high levels of student satisfaction regarding engagement and skill acquisition, and a 100% pass rate at the first attempt – which was great to see!
As there is an ethos of ‘integration’ within health and social care, which emphases the importance of working as part of a multidisciplinary team, in future runs micro teaching groups will consist of a mix of students from the different nursing fields as a means of further preparing students for the working environments they will be a part of once they qualify.
Thank you.
Twitter handle: @UWL_CNMH
Dr Linda McDonald, Senior Lecturer, University of West London, England
Care planning in lockdown
How do we teach 168 third students nursing students care planning in a lock down? This was a challenge we faced at the University of West London.
The college of nursing midwifery and health care had developed three-part video clips which followed patients with a variety of conditions. These were used as the foundation for our online care planning sessions.
Students nurses from all fields were divided into groups of five and were asked to watch the first scenario and develop a care plan using the bio-psycho-social model. This was repeated in weeks two and three. The plans were uploaded to turn it in as the formative assessment and presented as a group for the summative assignment.
Students developed their care planning skills, learned from and with student, developed negotiating skills and were more confident at presenting.
Twitter handle: @UWL_CNMH
Virna Rossi, PGCert Course Leader, Ravensbourne University, England
Authentic, relevant, inclusive assessment on PGCert
Authentic, relevant and inclusive were the main drivers for the PGCert assessment which is an e-portfolio.
The e-portfolio is made up of many elements, at the core there are two reflective commentaries: learning activities and learning environments, of course the students choose the content there. They have to articulate their education philosophy and review this at the end; they journal all the way along; they also gather various types of feedback in the feedback portfolio and they put together a curated resource list on the basis of a collaborative bibliography. The 'you choose' element is the gem of the e-portfolio: this is an element the students choose on the basis of their learning outcomes that they set themselves at the start of the course. I briefed the students using video, audio and this visual aid which accompanied us all the way through the unit.
Please connect with me on Twitter (@VirnaRossi) or via my website (inclusivelearningdesign.com)
Twitter handles: @VirnaRossi, @RavensbourneUK
Laura Witt, Deputy Registrar (Quality Assurance and Enhancement), Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, England
Creating recorded music portfolio assessments
Almost all of the Music students at Trinity Laban are assessed individually in a recital at the end of each academic year. In the first pandemic year, we wanted to preserve the opportunity for our final year students to present the repertoire that they would have performed as the culmination of their degree, so we devised a recorded assessment that allowed them to present work recorded earlier in the year and/or new recordings, as a digital portfolio.
The assessment design had to be flexible, as we knew that students would not necessarily have access to high quality instruments or recording equipment at home. We gave them the opportunity to provide information in writing about the context in which the recordings were made, and ensured that they weren’t assessed on the basis of recording quality. We also provided guidance on how to maximise the quality of the recording with the resources available and set up an AV helpline to provide one-to-one support.
Recorded portfolios have continued to be used in 2021, but with many more being made on site, with in-person support. These types of assessments develop valuable skills for students’ future careers and we intend to retain them within some of our programmes in future.
For further information about Trinity Laban, please visit our website www.trinitylaban.ac.uk
Or alternatively, contact l.witt@trinitylaban.ac.uk
Twitter handle: @TrinityLaban
Dr. Andrew McFaull, Lecturer in Accounting and Financial Education, King's College London, England
Is giving students autonomy the missing ingredient in creating engaging assessments?
Is giving students autonomy the missing ingredient in creating engaging assessments?
This is what I've started to questions because of the pandemic.
Due to the pandemic. I changed my assessments from a multiple choice quiz through to a consultancy project.
The reason I used MCQs before, although I am not the biggest fan of them, is that they work very well for large modules. This module has around two hundred students on it.
Now, what happened when I moved over to this consultancy project is a major boost in my module evaluations.
I'm convinced this is come from the assessment more than anything because most of the other factors are the same. I'm using mostly the same lecture material. Mostly the same tutorials. Yes, we did it online this year, but other people taught online didn't see the same increase in scores.
So the assessment was the only variable that really, really changed.
You can see the scores here. Notable percentage improvements. Why do I think this works? Well?
What I did was ask the students to identify a problem and propose a solution? Now this can be social problem, a commercial one. Anything. I think this works very well because it creates a sense of purpose for the students. A sense of mastery. It also gives them a sense of autonomy.
And I think when you look at the behavioural research, this is what people are looking for. Often.
To mark I use a rubric. If you want me to explain this in more detail, I have added a google docs link to a longer version of this video.
As you can see the quality of what they produced is very professional and of a high academic standard. It's of a level you could actually give to leading consultancy company.
And I think they [the consultancy companies] would be quite comfortable to give it to their clients. Overall I was very impressed with this change to assessment.
And something you might consider in your own module?
Rachael-Anne Knight, Professor of Phonetics, University of London, England
From anxious orals to relaxed recordings - phonetics production assessment post-covid.
Until 2021, many students of phonetics demonstrated their production skills in one-to-one oral exams, which they found highly stressful. I’m Rachael-Anne Knight, professor of phonetics at City, University of London, and I’d like to tell you about how Covid changed all that.
Students of speech and language therapy must be able to produce and recognise all the speech sounds that can be produced by humans, and transcribe them using the symbols on the screen.
To test production and recognition, traditionally students undertake a one to one oral exam. Although we’ve found ways to mitigate this, do see the papers on screen, students still find it stressful.
During the pandemic, the face to face oral was no longer an option. Instead students were asked to record videos of their productions, and their videos were amazing. Student marks showed a slight increase of 3 percentage points from last year, and, most importantly in the comfort of their own home, and under less time pressure, they were relaxed and able to do their best work, whilst taking time to reflect on their strengths and ways to improve. This is one covid assessment change I will be keeping long into the future.
Twitter handles: @r_a_knight, @CityUniLEaD, @CityUniHealth, @CityLCS
David T. Evans, Professor in Sexualities and Genders: health and well-being, University of Greenwich, England
Boosting your Technology Enhanced Learning capabilities: Maximising student achievements and success across e-teaching, e-learning and e-assessment (e-TLA)
Do you want to improve your students' achievements, their academic satisfaction and learning engagement? Would you like help them to gain digital skills, for their future development? I'm sure you would! I started this process before Covid-19, with students of sexual health nursing, not traditional technological students. But s a result of the pandemic, I am now enabling colleagues across my university do likewise, through numerous CPD events.
By using just 2 programmes: Adobe Spark and Adobe PremierRush, I am transforming my classroom teaching and presence into pedagogically and andragogically-sound e-learning resources. With impact across the teaching, learning and assessment for all of my students, I am seeing their capabilities advanced, their enjoyment of learning – AND assessment – boosted, and their active engagement in collaborative, on-line shared learning developed.
The assessment for “Promoting Sexual Health” module used to be a traditional essay. Now, it’s the creation of an Adobe Spark resource, with at least one video edited in PremierRush. The outcome is a high quality sexual health promotion resource, ready for sharing to client or patient populations. For the first time, in 31 years of teaching, I have awarded 95% to a student’s assignment. It was, truly, the most motivational assignment I have ever seen, and the student’s joy at creating it awe-inspiring!
So...go for it! Take your classroom greatness and re-present it, in pedagogically based, e-learning, fashion. All the while, boost your own Technology Enhanced Learning potential, and promote the digital literacy of students of today, citizens for tomorrow!
Twitter handles: @David_T_Evans, @UniofGreenwich, @GreEduHealth
Kate Sutherland – Senior Lecturer in Midwifery, Jane Forman – Senior Lecturer in Midwifery, Tessa Gamble – Lecturer in Midwifery, Claire Mckellow - Senior Lecturer in Midwifery, Lindsay Gillman – Associate Professor, Kingston University, England
Midwifery Virtual SBAR Assessment
Student: Hi my name is student midwife cohort 2019. I need to escalate a situation urgently.
Teacher: Hi this is Kingston University Midwifery Faculty, please go ahead.
Student: The situation is we need to complete our practical exam in the middle of a global pandemic.
Teacher: Right, that’s not ideal, what’s the background to this?
Student: Practical exams are integral to our course. This exam allows us to demonstrate our ability to safely assess women and escalate concerns clearly, using a structured tool. We outline the situation, background, our assessment and recommendations.
Teacher: oh, kind of like you’re doing now?
Student: *withering look* yes
Teacher: This sounds pretty important, what’s the issue with doing it like previous years…..?
Student: Ummm, the global pandemic?? The UK is in lockdown, some of us live far away, need to use public transport and some of us are clinically vulnerable. Plus we need actors, assessors, support staff…..
Teacher: Right. Good point. So what’s your assessment of the situation?
Student: We need to complete our exam to continue with our course, but we want to limit travel and contact wherever possible. But we still need a robust assessment of our skills to ensure we are safe in practice.
Teacher: This all sounds very reasonable. Did you know that research into this structured handover tool found that it is used most effectively over the phone? So if we uploaded a scenario, notes and observation charts to your virtual learning environment you could demonstrate all of the skills necessary by recording yourself escalating your concerns……….
Student: I mean, yea. That would be a perfect way to assess our skills whilst reducing the risk and stress of face to face exams. That would definitely be my recommendation.
Teacher: Great! I’m so glad we had this conversation! Now if only there was a structured way for us to present this idea……..
Student: *head in hands*
Twitter handle: @KUStGeorges
Anna Krajewska – Head of the School of Business and Accounting, Arif Zaman – Executive Director, Bloomsbury Institute London, England
Bloomsbury Institute’s ‘pandemic’ assessment practice in Critical Issues in Business Management module
Blowing out the candles on your birthday cake and traditional academic assessments? What could they possibly have in common?
Yes, you're right. They're so pre-pandemic.
So in our Critical Issues in Business Management module, we decided to do something different. We asked students to imagine that they're about to give a presentation to a meeting of Commonwealth ministers.
Let's hear about the why, what and how from the model leader, Arif Zaman:
A big challenge is how to get our students to think about the world globally, and also, in a sustainable way. We asked our students to look at how technology was changing and at digital transformation across the Commonwealth. We asked them to look, in particular, at FinTech, one of the most dynamic areas where technology is affecting business right now. We interacted with experts from the Commonwealth community. The results were outstanding, and a lot of engagement from students. And we're now following up with the best of those results; they’re being pulled together for a presentation to Commonwealth experts.
It's been a great experience for all. Thank you.
Twitter handle: @bilacuk