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Assessment and/or Giving Feedback to Learners
All the undergraduate modules with which I have been involved have
included assessment activities and, in some cases, feedback.
Assessment is involved primarily in the marking of essays,
programming exercises, demonstrations, project
dissertations and examinations. While feedback has taken the form
of formal feedback on coursework, informal feedback in labs and
tutorials and comments on draft dissertations.
Essays
I set two essay based courseworks for G53DDB these were to support
learning outcomes associated with acquiring and evaluating
information about digital business. I was unsure how to go about
marking these but gradually developed a list of the points I
expected to see covered in essays and used these to determine a
rough grade which I then modified according to a judgement of how
well each essay was presented. At the same time I wrote comments on
the essays highlighting grammar and spelling errors and sometimes
particularly factual errors. I also attempted to write a general
comment on the essay as a whole. These comments together with their
checklist performance were returned to the students.
Lab and Tutorial Exercises
For both G51SWT and G51MC2 I set formative
exercises on a weekly basis. Contact time is then made
available in terms of labs or tutorials as appropriate in
which students may get informal feedback on their
performance. Answers are also made available on the
module websites. Feedback is generally verbal and
involves correcting errors, praising good solutions and
suggesting more elegant or sophisticated approaches.
These are designed to support learning outcomes concerned
with ability to program and the ability to use
mathematical concepts and techniques.
Assessed programming Exercises
G51SWT involves
programming exercises since the ability to program is one of
the central learning outcomes both of the module but also
of our degrees as a whole. For reasons outlined in the PGCHE group project I use a mixture of
automated test rigs and human inspection to assess these. I use a
transparent mark scheme that looks for particular features in the
program. This mark scheme is supplied to students in advance and is
used as the basis for providing feedback on performance.
Demonstrations As part of their third year project, G53IDS/J each student is required to
demonstrate their program. This is worth 10% of their mark and I
generally mark it out of 10. Its primary purpose is to guarantee that
the program described in their dissertation genuinely exists and to
provide some guarantee that they actually produced it by allowing a
marker to assess their ability to explain it. As such its primary focus
is not the support of a learning outcome, however it does
nevertheless help assess their "enhanced programming
ability" and "ability to communicate their results to
others" which are two of the module learning outcomes. I generally work from a
base mark of 6/10 for the demonstration which I then modify based on
how well it goes so long as I am convinced the work is their own and
has been accurately reported.
Project Dissertations
Most students in the school are involved with two projects in the
course of their studies. A group project, G52GRP, and an individual project, G53IDS/J. The majority of the marks
for these projects are based around the production of interim and
final dissertations. I give students the opportunity to show me both
in advance of submission and have developed comment sheets (see here
for an example of the one used for the final individual
project report) to structure the feedback I give them.
Examinations A major element of assessment for all the
modules of which I have been convener, G51SWT, G51MC2 and G53DDB, is examinations. The
chief consideration here is in the design of questions and I have, I
think, become better over the years in designing questions that make
it clear the answer should be based on the techniques and material
covered in the module. I also have become more generous in my
allocation of mark schemes on being exposed to a wide spread of
student answers. For instance for the exam papers on G51MC2 I no longer give a single
mark for stating the definition of a concept but two or more based on
the number of components of the definition and marks for getting close
but not accurate answers.
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