Last academic year, staff in the Spanish Section at LSE’s Language Centre were awarded an e-Assessment grant from LTI to support their project of using iPads and annotating apps to mark and give students feedback electronically.

Why use tablet marking and feedback…

…from the teacher’s point of view…

Several applications were analysed and the three teachers who participated in the project each selected the one that they found easier to use. Some advantages that were common to all teachers:

Advantages of using

the iPad and apps

⇓

Improvements on

marking and feedback

⇓
  • portability
  • paperless
  • online backup
  • possibility to add comments
  • rubrics to reuse common comments
  • apps suitable and adaptable to participants’ marking styles
  • encourages reflection on marking and feedback
  • opportunities to improve student understanding by extracting and analysing data held
  • clearer and more detailed feedback

 

…from the students point of view…

iPadsDuring the first term students’ were exposed to the “traditional” and “electronic” way of marking and giving feedback and were then asked to answer an evaluation questionnaire in order to determine their preferences in terms of writing and submitting their work, and receiving feedback. Overall many students did not show any preference with regards to traditional and electronic assessment. Those more in favour of e-assessment and feedback gave the following reasons:

* confidence of knowing work is backed up

* e-feedback easier to use so more likely to revisit at a later date

* improved clarity and understanding of feedback

Want to know more ? Click on the picture below to get the full report. You’ll find details on the apps that were used along with a very useful comparison grid to help you choose the right tool.

EMASpanish

 

E-Marking and e-Feedback: what else?

Using tablets to enhance marking and feedback is only one option in what is known as Electronic Management Assessment (EMA). Following on this project the language centre is now working on a wider EMA project entitled “From-e-Marking to e-Feedback: training, applying and evaluating” which aims at raising awareness of and comparing three distinctive e-marking and e-feedback methods, one of them being iPad marking. This project is being funded by an LTI e-assessment grant and an update will be provided when it is completed.

LTI is working on EMA and its use at the LSE. Watch out this space for updates on projects.

Also have a look at JISC’s guide on EMA to discover how you can use technology to support the assessment lifecycle.