Transcript: eAssessment with large groups
Alison Reedy (Manager, Higher Education & Training Development, Office of
Learning and Teaching): CDU is a leader in online learning with the vast majority of
students enrolled externally. At CDU many lecturers are exploring ways of working
effectively with large groups of students to provide quality learning experiences and
meaningful assessment. Let me introduce you to some lecturers who teach large
groups of students. Let’s have a look at how they are managing some of the
assessment challenges of working with large groups.
Challenge 1: Avoiding assessment that encourages shallow
learning
Peter McDowell (Lecturer, School of Education): Deeper learning comes through
setting high expectations. In the design of your assessment items, make sure
learners understand that shallow, uninformed responses will simply be invalid. This
can be achieved through students researching, discussing, and debating the different
valid ways of meeting the assessment requirements.
Deborah Prescott (Lecturer, School of Education): Make sure your learners can
find a way of relating the assignment work to their personal situations. Your
assessments need to encourage work that is informed, defensible, relevant, and
valuable to students' lives.
Peter McDowell: This can often be done by setting rich tasks or problem-based
assignments - assessment designed to be open enough to allow students to explore
their own contexts. The forms and modes of presentation should reflect the
purposeful application of language, skills, and concepts.
Challenge 2: Providing high-quality, individual feedback
Dr. Susan Bandias (Senior Lecturer, School of Business):
(Teaches “Foundations of Management” [235 students] and “Human Resource
Management” [123 students].)
I use the Grade Centre of Learnline extensively to provide every student with weekly
formative feedback on their progress on revision questions, discussion board
questions and other online tasks. I use the email facility associated with the Grade
Centre to communicate directly with every student. The emails are fairly generic in
nature but provide students with regular feedback on their progress, time
management skills, understanding of the concepts taught and at times, capacity to
work under stress. Students who are lagging behind receive an email reminding
them of the need to keep up to date. The communication I have received from
students indicates that this regular formative feedback is motivating, it keeps
students on task provides them with an indication of their current progress and is
generally appreciated.
Challenge 3: Fairly assessing a diverse mix of students
Andrew Stechmann (Program Coordinator, Peer Assisted Study Sessions
[PASS]): PASS is an internationally renowned program and community, which sets
up group study sessions run by high achieving second or third year students, called
PASS leaders, in traditionally difficult first year units. Its aims are to increase
retention and to increase the marks of participating students. Other benefits include
social interaction, decreased feelings of isolation, and an enriched learning
experience. Many of the units selected for PASS support have high numbers of
students. For example, one first-year unit has around 500 students each semester.
Students enrolled in this unit come from different disciplinary areas and are from
diverse backgrounds.
Pass at CDU accommodates both internal and external students with on-campus and
online sessions. Sessions can accommodate 18 students and use pair and group
work to cover unit content according to student needs. This provides students in
large classes with the opportunity for small group interactions to meet their diverse
and individual needs.
As far as assessment is concerned, research shows that regular PASS participants,
on average, score higher marks than non-participants.
Challenge 4: Managing the volume of marking and coordinating
staff
Dr. Nicola Rolls (Theme Leader, Common Units Program): I manage CDU’s
compulsory first year Common Unit program. We employ up to 30 staff for about
4000 students a year. The most important aspect of managing so many staff is
making sure students are getting a consistent quality, experience. First we insist all
staff participate in our teaching induction covering our teaching philosophy,
standards and strategies for supporting first year students. The unit coordinators also
have a curriculum meeting each week with staff and lead moderations for all
assignments. In terms of marking load, students are divided into groups of 25 online.
There is a 2-week marking turnaround and no staff member is allowed to take more
than 6 groups, because we believe marking any more than 150 essays in 2 weeks
will affect the quality of the marking and feedback.
With 70% of our students studying externally, assessment in the common units is
predominantly online. They are marked online and feedback is provided to the
students online. Many of our casual staff are external as well, so staff meetings and
assessment moderation are conducted both face to face and/or through the online
classroom in the learning management system.
Our units enjoy excellent student feedback so we must be doing something right.
Challenge 5: Avoiding plagiarism
Fran Tolhurst (Lecturer, Tertiary Enabling Program): In the academic literacy unit
we teach, we’ve designed tasks in a way that help students to develop skills over the
semester. One way we do this, for example, is to provide reading notes, which help
them to identify the key ideas of the texts relevant to their assignments and provide
them with examples and practice in putting them into their own words. We also run
online workshops, which focus on different aspects of their assignments and provide
further examples and practice. Importantly too, even though we have large numbers
of students online, tutors provide support in the drafting stages and in feedback on
tasks. All these strategies help to reduce the likelihood of plagiarism.
Alison Reedy: These stories illustrate some of the approaches and practices that
CDU lecturers are using to manage the challenges of working with and assessing
large groups of students who are engaging with their learning and assessment
online.
Five Assessment Challenges adapted from James, R., McInnes, C., & Devlin, M.
(2002) Assessing Learning in Australian Universities: Ideas, strategies and resources
for quality student assessment. Centre for the Study of Higher Education for the
Australian Universities Teaching Committee. Accessed online at
http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/docs/AssessingLearning.pdf