Abstract:

Producing effective individual student feedback and assessment is a highly skilled and time-consuming task. In this presentation we show how general tools such as mail merge and annotation can be used for feedback and assessment of assignments in any media. The core of the process is to generate a feedback file for each student that has individual marks and comments for all assessment criteria, together with a spreadsheet summarising those marks and criterion. The approach has the advantage of giving structured individualised verbal feedback. This might be according to specified criteria or noting good points and points for improvement, etc. The feedback structure is chosen by the teacher, but the same for all students. Students may be encouraged to enter dialogue about the feedback. The spreadsheet record enables the teacher to easily pick out common themes. It also allows any teacher to follow up a student to see whether advice has been followed. The tools are illustrated with podcast assignments from the Department of Psychology at the University of Limerick and survey and word document assignments from the University of Hertfordshire funded Data Delight project. Integration with student record and managed learning environments is discussed. Experience of dissemination of the approach to colleagues is summarised with a view to implementing change in this and other areas.

Keywords:

Higher education, assessment, tools, mail merge.