Assessment Cycle: Quality Assurance
This wiki page provides a space to record small group discussions relating to the use of Web 2.0 tools in higher education and quality assurance of assessment practices.
Participants
Marcia Devlin
Catherine McLoughlin
Julian Cox
Robert Fizgerald
Siobhan Lenihan
Katina Zammit
Scribe: Jenny Waycott
The task for this small group discussion is to build on the recommendations identified in the morning session and consider how these might be applied at the quality assurance stage in the assessment cycle. In this session, the aim is to identify general recommendations, rather than technology-specific ones.
Scribe notes:
What recommendations apply that are shared by various web 2.0 tools that go beyond or are different from recommendations applicable to more conventional assessment?
Do and Don't statements....
- if it's quality assurance somebody should be able to oversee what is done; this is made easier because you've got the material immediately to hand;
- DO archive
- easier to track students; they submit it online, easy to find who's doing things and who's not
- how do you know it's the students doing the work? This is the same issue as you get with essays and conventional assessment.
- in terms of plagiarism, you have the same issues you have with paper-based assessment.
- electronic versus conventional games (e.g., setting things up to play monopoly); system can help track everything; how the standards are applied is very objective. Computer does some of the quality work for you - reliability, objectivity, validity - some of that can be built into the system. e.g., system can randomly assign students into pairs/ assign other students' work to review - use affordances of the technology to build in QA (e.g., calibrated peer review).
- can we always use the same rubric that we use for conventional assignments?
- DO use the same assessment rubric each semester to enable longitudinal evaluation.
- satisfactory/unsatisfactory work...
- formative assessment ... students have to go back and improve on the contributions they've made
- students have to make sure their posts are online - you have a record of contributions to the peer review process.
- 'making the invisible visible'
- KZ: complaints from students about rubrics, measuring in terms of counting marks; have to use learning guides with criteria very explicit, making assessment more qualitative.
- page 8 of discussion paper mentions QA issues - moderating and auditing.
- keeping it over time...
- visibility, evidence-based practice...
- all tools are characterised by particular affordances; Engestrom: "object-centred ...", shared knowledge artefacts; concept of knowledge creation...
- does that make it harder to evaluate? No - we have an object that shows students' knowledge; it's a record, it's visible, etc...
- contract - if someone has written something that seems profound, someone else might come along and evaluate that - they might get marked on that evaluation...
- student becomes the teacher; something private becomes public; teacher no longer controls the content; quality assurance is difficult in that environment.
- QA - showing rigour in what you're doing, student have been given marks for a reason.
- QA - professional development for tutors as well; ensuring that staff are skilled in new technologies and the pedagogy
- QA as defined by project - keeping record, doing longitudinal evaluations, being auditable.
- work vs play; students don't want academics invading their 'play' space
- greater availability of material; easier to look over time, see how marks have changed over time... enables us to recognise problems
- student feedback on the unit every semester enables us to see how it is going over time.
- do set administrative permissions to stop students deleting other students' work etc.
- auditing for accreditation purposes; e.g., demonstration of information literacy is a graduate capability for education students in NSW.
- professional accreditation might be behind universities in their professional criteria.
- DO consider the professional requirements ... (same as for written assessment); Do ensure use of tool fits with professional standards...
- Using web 2.0 technologies to provide a professional portfolio.
- DON'T relate everything back to standards; don't have to assess everything; if there are opportunities for students to use the tools to socialise - creating community; students are still getting the opportunity to learn to use the tools
- use the tools themselves to report back to staff
- don't want to assess everything students say to each other; social interactions...
- web 2 enables interactivity; paper versions of standard feedback, now it's all web-delivered; in the past feedback would not be delivered back to students; now you can deliver back to students who gave you the feedback
Comments (1)
Bobby Elliott said
at 9:36 pm on Nov 23, 2009
I think that many of these comments imply that teaching and learning continue as normal. That we bolt-on Web 2 to current practices. Has the traditional lecture (one expert talking to 50 students) any place in today's education system? Does it serve any purpose at all? Is there any point in teachers creating their own learning materials? These activities are outdated pedagogies -- but still predominate in HE. A new approach to teaching and learning (one that involves a new relationship between teachers and students) would require a different approach to QA.
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