Weekly Resource Roundup – 27/5/2021

As leader of our PGCTHE programme, I keep an eye out for resources to help staff teach effectively. These include webinars, podcasts, online toolkits, publications and more. Topics include active learning, online/blended teaching, accessibility/inclusion, and effective learning design based on cognitive science. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.   

Online events and webinars

Resources and publications

Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff. I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. You may also wish to follow my Twitter feed, Mary Jacob L&T.  

Demystifying Assessment Criteria

Assessment Criteria serve a number of functions: to render the marking process transparent; to provide clarity about what is being assessed how; to ensure fairness across all submissions; and to provide quality assurance in terms of the subject benchmark statements. While all these reasons are valid and honourable, there are a number of issues at play:

  1. Staff have greater or lesser control of the assessment criteria they are asked to use in marking student work and interpretations of criteria may vary between different staff marking the same assessment.
  2. Assessment criteria are different from standards and the difference between the two must be clearly communicated to students (ie. what is being assessed versus how well a criterion has been met).
  3. Students are often assessment motivated (cf. Worth, 2014) and overemphasis of criteria or overly detailed assessment criteria can lead to a box ticking-type approach.
  4. Conversely, criteria that are too vague or too reliant on tacit subject knowledge can be mystifying and inaccessible to students, especially at the beginning of their degree.

This blog post will not pretend to solve all the issues surrounding assessment criteria but will offer a number of potential strategies staff and departments more widely may employ to demystify assessment criteria, and marking processes, for students. Thus, students become involved in a community of practice, rather than being treated as consumers (cf. Worth, 2014; Molesworth, Scullion & Nixon, 2011). Such activities can roughly be grouped chronologically in terms of happening before, during, or after an assessment.

Before

  • Use assessment criteria to identify goals and outcomes at the beginning of a module, with check-in points in the run up to a deadline.
  • Identify the difficulty in understanding marking criteria. Students are often used to very narrow definitions of success with clear statements that “earn” them points. Combined with a prevalent fear of failure, this can undermine their understanding of the criteria. Additionally, they may feel that they cannot judge their own abilities well in this new context (university). Group discussions not of what criteria mean, but what students understand them to mean, can help identify jargon that requires clarification, allow staff to explain their personal understanding (if they are the marker) and allow students to seek clarification before embarking on an assessment.
  • Highlight the difference between criteria and standards to students (the what and the how well – and how this is distinguished in your discipline).
  • Allocating time to a peer marking exercise using the provided criteria with subsequent group discussion will help students better understand the process.
  • Encouraging students to self mark their work pre-submission using the provided criteria will also help them better understand the process.
  • Using exemplars to illustrate both criteria and standards with concrete examples can be very helpful. This might involve students marking an exemplar in session, with subsequent discussion; annotated exemplars where students gain insights into the marking process; or live feedback sessions where students submit extracts of their work-in-progress that are used (anonymised) to show the whole group the marking process. This then allows for questions and clarification on the judgements a marker makes when working through a submission. Staff may worry that students consider exemplars as “the only right way” to respond to an assessment brief – providing a range of exemplars, especially good ones, can counteract this tendency. Different types of exemplars can be used:
    • ‘Real’ assignments may be best for their inherent complexity (so long as students whose work is used consent to this use and their work is properly anonymised).
    • Constructed exemplars may make assessment qualities more visible.
    • Constructed excerpts (rather than full-length pieces) may be more appropriate when students first learn to look for criteria and how they translate into work as well as allay staff concerns about plagiarism.

During

  • Use the same language: making the links between assessment criteria, subject standards, and university standards clear through using the same terminology in feedback as appears in assessment criteria and subject benchmark statements.
  • Where multiple markers engage with different groups of students on the same assessment, having exemplars to refer to can help ensure clear standards across larger cohorts.

After

  • Refer students back to the assessment criteria and preceding discussions thereof when they engage with feedback and marks.
  • Reiterate the difference between criteria and standards.

Simply providing students with access to assessment criteria is not enough. It is essential that staff identify and clarify the distinction between criteria and standards and demystify the language of assessment criteria by examining tacit subject knowledge staff possess by virtue of experience. Using exemplars and group discussion of these in concretising how criteria and standards translate into a submission will provide students with insights into the marking process that enables them to better understand what they are being asked to do. Lastly, staff should repeatedly encourage students to make use of the availability of assessment criteria while they work on their assessments, which should enable students to feel better prepared and more focussed in their responses.

References:

Molesworth, M., Scullion, R., and Nixon, E. (eds.) (2011) The Marketisation of Higher Education and the Student as Consumer, London: Routledge

Worth, N. (2014) ‘Student-focused Assessment Criteria: Thinking Through Best Practice’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 38:3, pp. 361-372; DOI: 10.1080/03098265.2014.919441

Full programme: Aberystwyth University’s Learning and Teaching Conference 2021

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the 9th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, which is just over a month away, 29th June – 2nd July 2021. This year’s conference theme, Improvisation within Constraint: Reshaping a Learning Community in a Time of Change aims to reflect the commitment that AU staff have to enhance the student learning experience. 

We’re pleased to confirm our full programme.

You can register for the conference by completing this online form.  

We’re very excited to welcome four external speakers this year: 

  • This year’s keynote speaker is Dr Chrissi Nerantzi who is Principal Lecturer – Academic CPD, University Teaching Academy (UTA), Manchester Metropolitan University. Dr Nerantzi will focus on open and flexible pedagogies.  
  • Our second external speaker, Andy McGregor, who is Director of edtech for JISC, will be delivering a workshop focusing on the future of assessments.  
  • Our third external speaker is Dr Dyddgu Hywel, Senior Lecturer in Education at Cardiff Metropolitan, will be delivering an interactive presentation on prioritising student and staff well-being. (Dr Hywel’s presentation will be delivered through the medium of Welsh and we will be offering simultaneous translation.)  
  • Our final external speaker, Joe Probert, who is Customer Success Manager at Vevox, will deliver a session on how to make effective use of polling to engage learners.  

We have an exciting and varied programme this year from representatives from all faculties. In addition to our four external speakers, we will also have a presentation from students, Distance Learning forum and a Welsh-medium Business School panel.  

We look forward to seeing you at the conference, and please remember to register for the conference by completing this online form

If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact us

Weekly Resource Roundup – 19/5/2021

As leader of our PGCTHE programme, I keep an eye out for resources to help staff teach effectively. These include webinars, podcasts, online toolkits, publications and more. Topics include active learning, online/blended teaching, accessibility/inclusion, and effective learning design based on cognitive science. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.   

Online events and webinars

Resources and publications

Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff. I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. You may also wish to follow my Twitter feed, Mary Jacob L&T.  

Call for Case Studies – Blackboard Interactive Tools

We are looking for staff who would like to share their experiences of using Blackboard interactive features, e.g. blogs, journals, wikis, tests, discussion boards. We welcome case studies in any format, e.g. short text, a video, voice memo. These case studies would be included on our blog and used in future training sessions. Please sent your case studies to lteu@aber.ac.uk 

To learn more about different interactive Blackboard features:

Blogs & journals:

Interactive Blackboard Tools Series – Journals and Blogs (Part 1)

Blackboard Tools for Group Work (Blogpost 2): Blogs

Wikis:

Blackboard Tools for Group Work (Blogpost 3): Wikis

Tests:

Blackboard Tests – Creating Online Assessment Activities for your Students

Discussion boards:

Blackboard Tools for Group Work (Blogpost 4): Discussions

Final Academy Forum session of the year

We would like to invite you to the final Academy Forum session of the year taking place on 24th of May.  

This session will be an opportunity for us to look back on this year’s Academy Forum programme, designed specifically to support staff in teaching in different ways in a response to the pandemic and reflect on what we can take forward.  

Topics we covered this year were: 

  • Creating a Learning and Teaching Community 
  • Creating Podcasts in Panopto 
  • Why and how to help students reflect on their learning 
  • Motivation Strategies for Online Learning Engagement 
  • How can I plan online and in-person activities? 
  • How can I make my teaching more inclusive? 
  • How can I embed wellbeing into the curriculum? 
  • Preparing students for assessments 

We hope that you will be able to join us.  

Book on the session 

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference – extended by an extra day

Keynote announcement banner

We’re really starting to look forward to our forthcoming ninth Learning and Teaching Conference. The call for proposals has now closed – thank you to everyone who submitted a proposal.

Owing to the volume that we have received, we are now starting the Teaching Conference at lunchtime on Tuesday 29th June and running until the afternoon on Friday 2nd July.

We’ve got a number of external speakers across the four days and we’ll keep posting further updates via our blog of upcoming speakers. I’m pleased to announce that we have got our first Welsh medium keynote session which will be simultaneously translated.

We’ve also been able to run a special panel on Tuesday afternoon on Distance Learning practices and students from the School of Education and the Psychology Department will be offering sessions based on their experiences of learning throughout the pandemic.

The full programme will be announced in due course.

The conference will be taking place online via Teams (with Zoom used for sessions in Welsh).

You can book your place online now via this form.

Weekly Resource Roundup – 9/5/2021

As leader of our PGCTHE programme, I keep an eye out for resources to help staff teach effectively. These include webinars, podcasts, online toolkits, publications and more. Topics include active learning, online/blended teaching, accessibility/inclusion, and effective learning design based on cognitive science. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.   

NOTE: Oxford Centre for Staff Learning and Development (OCSLD) at Oxford Brookes University, “Publishing opportunity for HE students and educators on improving student engagement”

I recommend following the University of Birmingham HEFi Twitter account. It is a good source of pedagogical literature and micro-CPD.

Online events and webinars

Resources and publications

Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff. I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. You may also wish to follow my Twitter feed, Mary Jacob L&T.  

Vevox for Students

In the past month, the university has rolled out Vevox and begun training staff in its use. Vevox combines polls, surveys and Q&As in one interactive software and has integrations with Microsoft Teams and PowerPoint. We are glad to see that staff are already adopting this new software in their teaching and want to encourage students to do the same.
Aberystwyth University’s subscription to Vevox comes with Single Sign-On, meaning students can securely log in with their Aber Uni ID and password. Just as there are multiple ways that staff may use Vevox, so students might find it a useful tool.
For example, students could use Vevox polls and the Q&A function when presenting in seminars or workshops, especially in assessments that feature audience engagement as a criterion. Equally, Vevox offers great opportunities for student research, both in terms of analysing and interrogating survey design (e.g. by using Vevox’s existing sample surveys), and for creating and running their own surveys. Further, Vevox might be used in group work, offering students the opportunity to gather ideas and encourage diverse input from more quiet group members. This is especially useful at the moment, where student groups may include members from different households.
These are just a few examples of how students might use Vevox in their learning and we encourage staff to alert students to the fact that they, too, can access this software for free. Our Vevox guides are here (English and Cymraeg) and How-To videos are here (English and Cymraeg). The Learning and Teaching Unit is at hand alongside the Vevox Team to support any technical queries that may arise, providing student with support that is not available when using free alternatives.

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Second guest speaker: Andy McGregor, JISC

Keynote announcement banner

We are pleased to announce our second external speaker for this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference: Andy McGregor. Andy is Director of edtech for JISC.  

Andy’s workshop will focus on the future of assessment and is based on JISC’s paper: The future of assessment: five principles, five targets for 2025, which ‘sets five targets for the next five years to progress assessment towards being more authentic, accessible, appropriately automated and secure’.

Andy is responsible for managing JISC’s portfolio of research and development projects which develop new services that help universities and colleges improve education and research.

In addition to Andy, this year’s keynote will be delivered by Dr Chrissi Nerantzi from Manchester Metropolitan University.

The ninth annual learning and teaching conference is taking place online between Wednesday 30th June and Friday 2nd July. You can book your place by completing this online form.

Keep following our blog for more announcements.