Online assessment

<The images/ videos/ partial content are from the internet. These materials are for educational reference only. >

Assessment, Learning and Teaching in Higher Education https://sally-brown.net/kay-sambell-and-sally-brown-covid-19-assessment-collection/

Assessment in Higher Education https://ahenetwork.org/home-3/

e-Assessment Association https://www.e-assessment.com/

Online Learning and Assessment in Higher Education: A Planning Guide https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9781843345770/online-learning-and-assessment-in-higher-education

Practitioner Research in Higher Education http://ojs.cumbria.ac.uk/index.php/prhe/issue/view/72

Transforming Assessment https://transformingassessment.com/

Transforming Assessment in Higher Education https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/guidance/teaching-and-learning/transforming-assessment

Using Workshop Activity on Moodle to Organise Peer Assessment

<The images/ videos/ partial content are from the internet. These materials are for educational reference only. >

Sharing by Ms. Kammy Kam Mei Lau

Peer assessment has been applied in a wide variety of academic contexts to enhance students’ learning through giving and receiving comments to and from their peers. However, the logistics of peer assessment can be difficult and time-consuming. Ms. Kammy Kam Mei Lau, Lecturer from the Department of Psychology, taught PSY3018 Child and Adolescent Psychopathology in Semester 1 (2020–21). She found that “Workshop activity,” a function on Moodle, is a useful tool for arranging and managing peer assessment. This article details Ms. Lau’s experiences in using workshop activity to assign peer assessments. She also provided some tips for instructors on preparing peer assessments.

In Ms. Lau’s course, students were required to submit two assignments: an individual case study video presentation and a peer-rating assessment. The individual case study video presentation was a summative assessment. Students were asked to submit a presentation video, which showed a PowerPoint and their faces. The peer-rating assessment was based on the individual case study presentation. After the students submitted their presentation videos, each student was allocated five peers’ work to review. It was time-consuming and hard to organise the allocation, particularly when the class size was large. Fortunately, Ms. Lau discovered the workshop activity function on Moodle, which was helpful for instructors in organising peer assessment.

The workshop activity has four operation phases: Set-up, Submission, Assessment, and Grading Evaluation. The set-up phase allows instructors to establish the requirements of the assignment—for example, specifying the file format and due date. In the submission phase, students submit their work on the workshop activity. The submission phase has a reviewer allocation function. Instructors can allocate students’ work randomly or manually. In Ms. Lau’s practice, she reviewed all of the students’ presentation videos before allocation. She did the allocation manually so that she could ensure that every student would review at least one high-quality presentation video, giving them the opportunity to learn from good examples. To ensure fairness, she also arranged pairings carefully to avoid a reviewer’s work being assessed by his/her reviewee.

In the assessment phase, students submit their peer reviews. According to the students’ learning needs, instructors can ask them to submit various types of feedback, such as comments, numerical grades or the number of errors. In Ms. Lau’s course, she asked students to submit comments. She provided guidelines for students’ comments with three components: strengths, weaknesses, and improvements. When analysing their peers’ work, students needed to recall the knowledge that they gained during the course. Moreover, students were required to write constructive feedback and use their critical thinking skills (Parti, 2002). Assessing peers’ presentation videos also facilitated self-assessment using meta-cognitive skills. When students evaluated the success or failure of their peers’ work and provided suggestions, they reflected on how they could have improved their own work. After students received feedback from their peer reviewers, they judged whether the comments were reasonable and helpful for making further improvements. Ms. Lau recommended the use of peer assessment in courses to promote active engagement (autonomy and motivation) (Pope, 2001) and learner responsibility (Somervell, 1993).

Ms. Lau shared how she set up a peer assessment using a workshop activity

Based on her teaching experiences with the workshop activity, Ms. Lau shared three tips for instructors in preparing peer assessment: (1) Use Moodle Turnitin to prevent plagiarism: Workshop activity on Moodle is a strong tool for arranging peer assessment; however, the submitted files are not checked for plagiarism. To prevent plagiarism, Ms. Lau suggested that instructors might also request students to submit the original files to Turnitin. (2) Using the grading evaluation carefully: Ms. Lau was concerned about the responses of the students if part of their assignment mark was given by their peers. Hence, her students were only required to submit comments on strengths, weaknesses, and ways of improvement in the grading evaluation phase. When designing peer assessment, instructors should exercise their own discretion based on the educational needs of the course. (3) Being aware of late submissions in the submission phase: Ms. Lau shared that a few students had submitted their work just after the manual allocation of peer assessments was completed. This meant that late work was not assigned a peer reviewer. To avoid this issue, instructors could extend the length of time between the due date and the peer allocation exercise.

The workshop activity is a easy and useful educational tool for peer assessment. If you do not have experience with using it in your courses, let’s get started on this exciting adventure!

User guide: Moodle 3.9: https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/Workshop_activity

Reference

Patri, M. (2002). The influence of peer feedback on self- and peer-assessment of oral skills. Language Testing, 19(2), 109–131.

Pope, N. (2001). An examination of the use of peer rating for formative assessment in the context of the theory of consumption values. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 26(3), 235–246.

Somervell, H. (1993). Issues in assessment, enterprise and higher education: The case for self-, peer and collaborative assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 18(3), 221–233.

Resource: https://www.eduhk.hk/lttc/asi/res-sharing-peer-assessment.html

Taking Advantage of ePortfolios to Enhance Students’ Reflective Learning

<The images/ videos/ partial content are from the internet. These materials are for educational reference only. >

Sharing by Dr. Sophia Lam

The ePortfolio is an assessment tool that allows course instructors and students to engage in creative expression. It also allows instructors to track students’ development and progress throughout the course. Dr. Sophia Lam, an Assistant Professor from the Department of Chinese Language Studies, used the ePortfolio to assess students in her Cantonese and Hong Kong Local Culture course, which is an elective for students in the Bachelor of Arts in Language Studies programme. Aside from knowledge of Cantonese and Hong Kong culture, the course aims to develop two Generic Intended Learning Outcomes (GILOs): problem-solving and critical thinking skills. After reviewing students’ ePortfolios and performance in Semester 1, 2020/21, Dr. Lam made observations on unique features of the ePortfolio that can enhance students’ reflective learning. She also shared some challenges of using the ePortfolio for assessment.

The ePortfolio allows the instructors to track students’ progress and compare their work in different stages. As a prerequisite, it is important to redesign the course content to coordinate with ePortfolio and course learning outcomes. Dr. Lam reported that the two GILOs (problem-solving and critical thinking skills) were particularly emphasised in the course, and she designed a three-phase learning journey: enhancing knowledge, applying knowledge and developing generic skills. In her course, Dr. Lam introduced common cinematographic techniques used in advertisements to enhance students’ knowledge. Next, she showed some examples and analysed them with the students to see how the examples used techniques relevant to the theme, which allowed students to practise applying their knowledge. Afterward, Dr. Lam posed questions for students to think about and discuss to develop students’ problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

After restructuring the course materials, instructors need to consider the pedagogical approach used in their lectures and prepare guidance for the students to follow. To facilitate the development of GILOs, Dr. Lam used inquiry-based learning. In every lecture, she gave the students a question to discuss and reflect on throughout the class. Dr. Lam also suggested that instructors can ask students to submit participatory evidence for each activity as part of their ePortfolio. Such evidence can be a conclusion to the discussion, a study journal, or notes in any format that document students’ thoughts and learning progress. The purpose of having participatory evidence in students’ ePortfolios is to make the learning progress visible. It is easy to focus exclusively on the final product and to overlook the learning process. However, invisible progress is essential for students to develop and improve their learning (Bass and Eynon, 2009). Adding participatory evidence to the ePortfolio also accelerates the process of giving and receiving feedback. Dr. Lam pointed out that instructors can track students’ learning by going through their participatory evidence. Instructors then can give concrete, tailor-made feedback to students. They may also identify students’ learning gaps, and take follow-up actions accordingly.

Compared to electronic papers and examinations, the ePortfolio embraces a wider range of multi-media expression. Dr. Lam suggested that this creates an opportunity for instructors and students to be more creative by introducing multiple sources from different platforms and in different formats. This variety of sources (e.g., journaling, reading, and media) enables students to take ownership of their learning and explore many sources of information. When students have more autonomy, they are more engaged and motivated to learn and think (Entwistle & Karagiannopoulou, 2014; Kuh et al., 2005). For instance, Dr. Lam redesigned one assignment by replacing an exam with a media analysis. Students could include videos, photos with captions, and descriptive text in their analyses. In the process, students explored and filtered different types of sources using their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The ePortfolio allows students to lay out their sources and analysis more easily and effectively. Dr. Lam hoped that providing students with autonomy in selecting and presenting their materials could increase their motivation.

A snapshot of an ePortfolio from Dr. Lam’s course

The ePortfolio provides many benefits, but also poses some challenges. Dr. Lam shared two such challenges that she experienced last semester. First, both instructors and students need to make extra effort to learn how to use new tools and choose between them. Dr. Lam observed that students perform better if instructors provide clear guidance. Instructors can develop a course-specific ePortfolio template page and step-by-step guide workshop for students to attend. Another challenge in using ePortfolio relates to the absence of a standard page layout comparable to the physical paper format. Workarounds must be used to include citations and footnotes.

Reference

Entwistle, N., & Karagiannopoulou, E. (2014). Perceptions of assessment and their influences on learning. In C. Kreber, C. Anderson, N. Entwistle, & J. McArthur (eds.), Advances and innovations in university assessment and feedback (pp. 75–98). Edinburgh University Press.

Eynon, B., & Bass, R. (2009). Capturing the visible evidence of invisible learning – academic commons. Academic Commons. https://academiccommons.org/capturing-the-visible-evidence-of-invisible-learning/

Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J. H., & Whitt, E. J. (2005). Assessing conditions to enhance educational effectiveness. Jossey-Bass.

Resource: https://www.eduhk.hk/lttc/asi/res-sharing-reflective-learning.html