School of Biomedical Sciences (BMS)
Ian McFadzean, Stuart Knight and Sharon Markless
Barcode System: the solution to all your coursework
submission problems
Engaging students with feedback on essays: conditional
release of grades via Blackboard
In the School we now make extensive use of barcodes to record the submission
and return of coursework. The instigator of this simple but versatile innovation is
Dr Ron Jacob (ron.jacob@kcl.ac.uk ) and he will be happy to discuss any
technical aspects. All coursework submitted to either of our academic centres
(Waterloo and Guy’s Campus’) is logged using the barcode system. Programme
administrators create a record for each assignment allowing the students to print
off a personalised coversheet from the Virtual Campus which they attach to their
work. The coversheet has three barcodes, one of which is the student’s ID
number as displayed on their ID cards. The other barcodes identify the course
work; one for submission and one for return. The appropriate barcode is
scanned along with the ID number when the student submits or collects their
work. The software can import an Excel spreadsheet of students enlisted on a
module and use it to create a register of when coursework is submitted and
returned.
Writing essays is an area of concern for many students in the School as they do
not get much practice during their A-levels. For most modules the opportunity to
write essays during the semester is limited yet the students are assessed using
essays in their main unseen written examinations. Students therefore need to be
presented with opportunities to receive formative feedback on their essay writing
skills. There is also the additional problem of encouraging students to actually
learn from the feedback that is given. In a pilot for the second year Gene Cloning
and & Expression module (n=150) stuart.knight@kcl.ac.uk tried to address these
issues in a formative in-course essay. The arrangement of in-course essay and its
assessment was as follows:
‰Written under exam conditions
‰Students told that the title of the question would be from the first three weeks of
the module
‰Same length as exam essay
‰Marked with pro forma feedback sheet and returned to students
‰No grade given on the essay
‰Students given level 5 marking criteria
‰Students provided with a session in which the marking criteria are “translated”
into the language that was used in the feedback pro forma
‰Blackboard is used to conditionally release the grades to the students,
developed by julia.warner@kcl.ac.uk
‰Students have to logon and estimate their grade based on the feedback and the
marking criteria
‰If the wrong grade is estimated and “error message” encourages them to look
again at the feedback/marking criteria and repeat the estimation
Advantages
‰Easy to use by students
‰Easy to set up by administrators
‰Easy to sort and file coursework using
standard format printed coversheet
‰Simple technical requirements
‰Easy to monitor submission of work by
students (date and time recorded)
‰Ability to monitor the extent to which
marked assignments are collected by
students
‰Easy to integrate submission data of
assignments from two different
locations
‰Ability to identify all the submission
dates of coursework across various
modules
‰Ability to identify students who are
consistently not submitting coursework
to identify potential difficulties
‰Ability to monitor the adherence to the
School’s four week turnaround time for
coursework
One week after the return of the essays 80% of students had accessed Blackboard
and estimated their grade: only 31% estimated correctly. In module feedback 78%
of respondents positively rated this approach to providing feedback:
oThe way the essay feedback was done was great, it really got us to think about
the quality of our work and what we honestly thought it deserved. You should
definitely use this again
oThe in course essay is a very useful exercise and the way the feedback is given
(i.e. working out your own grade first) is a good idea.
oThe essay feedback exercise, where we had to work out what our grade is, was a
very good method
Advantages:
‰Students were given feedback on essays written under “unseen written exam
conditions” that simulated their main examinations
‰Students were encouraged to engage with the feedback on the essays
Issues for development:
‰Students are still able to simply “guess” their grade without engaging with their
feedback
‰Are students able to link up the feedback given to the marking criteria?
Engaging students in the design of experiments
ian.mcfadzean@kcl.ac.uk
One of the key advantages science students should gain from education in a
research rich environment is an understanding of the centrality of “the research
question” and the design of experiments to address that question. Over the
years, as student numbers have increased, class practical sessions have not
only been reduced in number, but have been designed to “work”; students follow
an “instruction set” designed to ensure they get the correct result.
Whilst this approach has advantages, it often fails to engage the student in
thought as to WHY they are doing the experiment in that particular way; there is
no “research question” being answered and no input into experimental design on
the student’s part.
Recently we have restructured a key practical in a year 2 pharmacology module
(Drugs & Disease ‘B’) in an attempt to address these issues. Notable aspects
are;
‰ Students are divided into
Example of notes for facilitators
groups of 12, but work in pairs
Apply morphine (300 nM) to the bath. This should inhibit the twitch
‰Each group is allocated a
height significantly (but don’t tell students this). The response should be
maximal within 3-5 minutes.
facilitator (trained PG student)
‰1 week before the lab class,
Workshop discussion points; how do you decide what drug
the facilitator runs workshop with concentration to use? (A; trial and error or read the literature). How do
you arrive at the correct final bath concentration? (A: V1C1 = V2C2).
the group and sets a simple
How long should you apply the drug for? (students often have no idea
how quickly drugs act) What are the problems with leaving morphine in
“research question”
contact with the tissue for too long? (A: tolerance). What if it doesn’t
‰Students are told what
work; what might be the reason for this (wrong concentration (check
calculation!); higher concentration needed; no effect of the drug)? How
equipment and drugs are
long does it take drugs to reverse (A; it varies but can be several tens of
available to them and are tasked minutes (about ten for morphine) and what determines this? (A; receptor
but more importantly the fact that drugs “stick” to tissues (esp.
with designing an experiment to affinity
lipophilic drugs) so removing them from the bath doesn’t mean the drug
has gone from the tissue)
address the question
‰The demonstrator guides them Lab discussion points; How would you quantify this response to
morphine (% inhibition); how would you check it was significantly
on experimental design
significant (NOT repeat four times on the same tissue which is the usual
‰The following week, the
answer). What is the clinical significance of this action of morphine (A:
causes constipation).
students carry out their
experiment
Things we have found to work
Learning and teaching in boxes
Many students compartmentalise their learning: between modules and between
years. There is a tendency to think that once a topic has been learned and
examined it can’t be relevant to any other part of their studies. This is reflected in
reluctance to integrate information between modules and between lectures within
a module. In some ways the students’ approach echoes how staff carry out their
teaching: being unaware of the content of other modules or lectures on the same
module.
Issues for consideration
‰Do our methods of assessment reinforce the students’ compartmentalisation of
information?
‰How can students be encouraged to synthesize information between modules?
The secret art of assessment
All assessments now have Marking Criteria that have been designed by staff to
reflect the different academic levels. This information is readily available for
students and staff.
Issues for consideration
‰Do students make use of the Marking Criteria?
‰Do students understand what we are looking for based on the Marking Criteria?
‰Do students appreciate that the criteria change as their programme progresses?
‰How do staff interpret the Marking Criteria
‰Should Marking Criteria be rewritten to reflect the language that students readily
understand?
‰Should feedback be “standardised” to reflect the Marking Criteria?
‰Should staff be trained to ensure that Marking Criteria are interpreted uniformly?
Things we could do better