Rene’s Assessment

I attended a guest lecture by Jesse Martin on how Psychology can contribute to the scholarship of teaching. It was an interesting talk, but the thing that really caught my attention concerned feedback.

Jesse was illustrating how we often fail to apply well understood psychological principles and research to our practice by looking at the current hype around feedback. According to existing cognitive research, extensive feedback actually breeds compliance, not learning. While targeted feedback at key points in someones development is important, continuous detailed feedback actually inhibits independent critical thought.While a bit of a shock at first, I must admit that this does make sense on an intuitive level. So then what do we do?

Well, there are some usefull suggestions from existing psychological research here as well. One observed phenomenon that we might exploit is the testing effect. This effect describes how neural connections are strengthened by retrieval. practice, such as through formative assessment, can therefor enhance the retention of what has been learned. it has also been shown to improve the retention over time.

So formative assessment is still seen as crucial. But it might be that the activity is much more important then the feedback resulting from it.

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At the EU workshop I attended in Ispra, Italy last year (see blogposts Psychometrics versus pedagogy and High stakes national assessments and ranking) we agreed to write some articles on quality aspects of computer based assessments to go towards a report for the European Commission. I’m glad to say that the report has now been published, and can be accessed online via the following link: Towards a research agenda on computer-based assessment

I think there’s many interesting articles and views within the report, and I will certainly be reviewing the interesting perspectives that my colleagues presented at the workshop in this report. Do have a look, I am positive there will be something of interest there for virtually anyone.

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Right then, some more from the past Blackboard conference, as promised…

I attended 2 very interesting talks around a building block developed for Sheffield Hallam University called: ‘The Assignment Handler’. It is basically an extention of the gradebook functionallity that already exists within Blackboard.

Sheffield Hallam have decided on a policy that all grades should be fed back to students in a central place, together with feedback. The central place they chose was the Blackboard gradebook. To do that they implemented the following features:

• A transparent and consistent handling of online exams, online submitted exams and exams submitted through the assignment handling office. All these can be set on Bb, submission is logged on Bb, and results and feedback are published through bb. this creates a central place where student process can be comprehensively managed (by staff and students)
• Some bulk-upload and download functionality. Assignments are renamed using module codes and student numbers. Feedback and marks can be uploaded in a single archive, which is useful with larger cohorts.
• The option to withold a mark until the student has reflected on, and responded to, the feedback provided. The University is now researching to what extend this actually motivates students to engage genuinely with their feedback.
• Generation of confirmation e-mails as receipts of submission
• Support for group assignments

As we have just started to look into a structural sollution around online submission ourselves, this presentation was brilliantly timed. There was a lot of mumbling in the audience on the non-responsiveness from Blackboard on this issue, as many institutions have requested functionality like this before. and in all fairness, most of it is pretty generic and sensible and should probably have been part of the core product for years. In stead it is now a buildingblock that Blackboard will most likely charge us a nice extra fee for.

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I just watched this incredibly inspiring and funny TEDtalk by David Eggers. It’s a wonderful example of the power of what direct and personal feedback can do for learning. More importantly though, it is about how passion and fun can help children learn.

It does make me wonder though… would we be able to set up something like this in the UK, given all the bureaucracy with CRB checks and the likes?

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