We are continuing to disseminate and discuss the work of the Assessment and Feedback programme and related projects through a series of webinars. The webinars are free and open to all and will be hosted in Blackboard Collaborate. Go to http://bit.ly/afwebinars for further information on the sessions and to register. You might want to bookmark/get feeds from this page for information on future events.
Using open source assessment and feedback tools
Friday 15 Feb 12-1pm
One of the strands in the Assessment and Feedback programme has been focusing on developing existing open source tools and adapting them for use in organisations beyond those they were developed in. As the projects draw to a close, this webinar will share some of their common experiences and findings. Some of these have been captured in a summary from Wilbert Kraan (Jisc CETIS), who has been supporting the projects. The session will include an overview of the work and presentations from the projects with opportunities for questions and discussion.
Peer review and the development of evaluative skills
Monday 18 Feb 12-1.15pm
The webinar will be led by Professor David Nicol. Peer review is defined in this webinar as a reciprocal process where students produce written feedback reviews on the assignments of peers and receive feedback reviews on their own assignment. Prior research has reported on the learning benefits of receiving feedback reviews. Very few studies have explored the merits of feedback production or the cognitive and learning processes that this activates. This is the subject of this webinar. Participants will first engage in a peer review task and will then reflect on, and discuss, the review process from different perspectives. Participants’ reflections will be compared and discussed in relation to recent literature and studies of peer review. The assumption in this webinar is that an important task for teachers should be to help students develop the capacity to judge the quality of their own work while it is being produced (Sadler, 2010). This cannot be achieved merely by transmitting feedback information to students, even if the feedback is of high quality.
NB. In the first 15 minutes of this webinar you will be asked to engage in a short writing and reviewing task. Having an experience of reviewing will help you appreciate more fully the research findings which will be discussed, and the unexplored potential of peer review. We will ask that your written responses are submitted electronically. Anonymity of submissions is guaranteed and contributions will not be shared without permission. Spaces for this webinar are limited so book now to avoid disappointment.
Programme-focused assessment – the PASS project
Monday 25 Feb 12-1pm
Prof Peter Hartley will lead this webinar outlining the work of the HEA-funded PASS project. The project aimed to address the issue of designing an effective, efficient, inclusive and sustainable assessment strategy which delivers the key course/programme outcomes. Further details to follow although you can now register for the session.
A preliminary evaluation of the e-Feedback Evaluation Project (eFEP)
Friday 1 March 12-1pm
The aim of the eFEP project is to evaluate the use of spoken and written e-feedback when these modes of delivery have become standard practice within a Higher Education Institution. The evaluation focuses on current practice in modern languages at the Open University in terms of the quality of the feedback itself; staff and student perceptions; and student engagement.In order to test the extent to which the lessons learnt at the OU are applicable to non-distance learning contexts, we are also conducting a smaller-scale evaluation of the use of e-feedback at the University of Manchester. The aims of the session are:
• To outline the work done so far and plans for the next few months.
• To present the project’s recent findings from staff and student surveys, analysis of e-feedback and ‘feedback on feedback’ exercise.
• To evaluate and seek feedback on the main evaluation tools used in the project (FACT analysis tool and ‘feedback on feedback’ approach).
• To seek feedback on current plans for staff and student training (‘feedback alignment exercise’)
The presenters are Maria Fernandez-Toro and Concha Furnborough from The Open University.