SCOF: A Standardised, Customisable Online Feedback Tool

SCOF: A Standardised, Customisable

Online Feedback ToolDr. Ian Glover

City University London, UK{ian.glover.1@city.ac.uk}

Outline

• The Problem(s)

• Possible Solutions

• SCOF• Potential Uses• Demonstration

• Early Results

• Future Work

Problem - Sector (UK)

• Increasing student demand for meaningful feedback.

• Higher student fees = better ‘value’ needed.

• Reduced government funding = less resources per student.

• National Union of Students Charter on Feedback & Assessment (Summary)

Problem - Institution

• Institution-wide feedback timescale (3 weeks max.)

• Increased reliance on PhD students for grading

• Huge pressure to increase research outputs

Problem – School/Faculty

• Wide variety of assessment methods:• Online, Offline (Hard copy), Situated (Labs)• Reports, schematics, models, software, presentations, …

• Little exposure to learning technologies or pedagogical good practice

• Conservative mind-set – resistant to new processes

Possible Solutions

• Quality-focussed solutions• Formal moderation of all feedback• Mandatory training in providing good feedback – including periodic

reviews• Peer review of feedback

• Speed-focussed solutions• Rubrics/Feedback schema• Brief audio/video summaries• Generic feedback for whole cohort

But…

• Rubrics/Schemes trade individuality for speed (Stevens & Levi, 2004)

• Detailed feedback necessarily focuses on errors/problems• Little time to encourage and praise good work (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006)

• Students have mixed reactions to rubrics• Like the speed of feedback they allow• Dislike the impersonal text(Andrade & Du, 2005)

• Yet, standardisation can help students make better use of feedback (Duncan, 2007)

None ideal, so a ‘third way’ needed

SCOF• Aims to give the speed of

rubrics, but encourage consistent, high-quality personal feedback.

• Can include grades for each feedback item.

• 3-stage process• Select scheme values• Customise generated output• Save final file

Example Scheme in SCOF

Feedback Editing

SCOF

• Produces ‘rich’ electronic documents with images, links, styling, etc.

• Output not obviously based on a rubric

Example Final Output File (PDF)

SCOF

• Intended for use on Tablets (e.g. iPads, Android, etc.) and Smartphones, as well as PCs.

• Can import gradebook from Moodle for easier personalisation.• Though not linked to particular assessment type, or distribution

platform (i.e. VLE).

Potential Uses

• ‘Instant’ feedback, e.g. for presentations

• Support ‘Feedforward’ practices by giving links to extra resources.

• Provide quality base feedback for use by inexperienced graders

• Peer review by students

• Focus on common aspects = more time on specifics

Demonstration[Click Here]

Early Results

• Pilots across 4 schools at City (Social Sciences, Health, Informatics, Engineering)

• Students appreciate the increased speed of receiving feedback

• Staff like the efficiency increases in producing quality feedback• But, some resistance due to having to plan the feedback scheme prior

to grading.

But Don’t Just Take My Word For It!

Daniel Apau (Pilot User, Lecturer in Health Sciences)

Future Work

• Open Source release

• Feedback bank to enable reuse of existing items

• Save values in database, then statistical analysis of performance across assessments

• Closer integration with Moodle

• Offline version?

Questions?

http://blogs.city.ac.uk/ted

http://www.flickr.com/photos/irglover/

CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

References• Andrade, H. & Du, Y. (2005).

Student perspectives on rubric-referenced assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 10(5). [Online]

• Duncan, N. (2007). ‘Feed-forward’: improving students’ use of tutors’ comments. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 32 (2). [Online]

• Nicol, D. J. & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31 (2). [Online]

• Stevens, D.D. & Levi, A.J. (2004). Introduction to rubrics: An assessment tool to save grading time, convey effective feedback and promote student learning, Sterling, VA: Stylus