Embedding excellence through fusion of education, research and professional practice
Students at BU, when asked recently, have voiced their wishes for clearer expectations about assignments and for clearer feedback. One of the tools that can be used to enhance feedback is the BU Generic Assessment Criteria, revised in 2021. This recent version places more emphasis on skills such as team-working, group work/project work, self-management of… Read more » about Providing meaningful feedback for students
uGrade is BU’s name for our online peer and self-assessment system called WebPA, a product of Loughborough University and the University of Hull. uGrade is open source, locally hosted and integrated with Brightspace. It allows groups of students to mark each other’s (and their own) participation in group work against set criteria. uGrade uses an algorithm to… Read more » about Updated guidance for uGrade
FLIE’s Principal Lecturer Anne Quinney delivered an Education Excellence workshop on Assessment for Learning. The workshop focussed on the 6 dimensions of Sambell’s model (below) and provided opportunities to discover how to use these in unit design and in designing assessment. Sambell’s model underpins the BU Assessment Design policy (6c) and the BU Generic Assessment… Read more » about Assessment for Learning: Education Excellence workshop
We are currently investigating an issue with large file submissions which is preventing students from submitting large files to Brightspace (files over 1.3 GB). A fix has been identified and D2L are actively working on resolving the issue. We’re hopeful this will be resolved shortly and will update you on any developments. How does this… Read more » about Brightspace issue with large file submissions
It’s that time of year when lots of people are involved in marking student assignment submissions. A reminder that there is lots of online guidance available to help you through the process, especially if this is something you haven’t done for a while. From the Brightspace Staff Resources area you can search on Guidance by… Read more » about Online guidance for marking and feedback
A very long time ago, in the early 1970s, I competed at national level, even dancing in the finals at the iconic Blackpool Tower ballroom, and can share some insights from my ‘lived experience’ of dance competitions. There happened to be a ballroom dancing school in the village I grew up in, famous for its… Read more » about Brass bands and ballrooms: what can we learn about assessment and feedback from Strictly Come Dancing?
This month the open access Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education published a special edition, the Compendium of innovative practice; learning development in a time of disruption. (Issue number 22). https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe This timely peer-reviewed special issue contains 102 short pieces organised into 11 thematic sections that explore the challenges posed by the pandemic and the… Read more » about Compendium of Innovative Practice
During the 20/21 academic year, we saw an increase in different file types being submitted to Turnitin, specifically Excel and HTML files. Although these file types are accepted by Turnitin, the marking experience isn’t always straightforward. When Turnitin states it can accept a certain file type, what this means is that it can process the… Read more » about Marking Excel and HTML files in Turnitin
A publication this month from the Office for Students (OfS) reports on assessment practices in relation to spelling, punctuation and grammar. This was partly informed by reports from employers that graduates were not meeting their expectations of proficiency in literacy skills. https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/7c292a54-015d-4638-8c30-18e0eba00bf3/assessment-practices-in-english-higher-education-providers-ofs.pdf According to the report (paragraph 7b), “Accurate and effective spelling, punctuation and grammar… Read more » about New assessment report from the Office for Students
The EAT framework, developed by Professor Carol Evans and originally published in 2016, has been re-imagined as part of a European Erasmus +project. EAT is a model designed for staff and students to think about features of effective assessment practice and the interrelated nature of them. There are three core dimensions to the model Assessment… Read more » about The EAT project; equity, agency and transparency in assessment.
