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While supplementation of face-to-face (F2F) teaching with online engagement is increasingly common, the educators' challenge of teaching F2F personalities and facilitating online personalities has not been widely explored. In this paper, we report on a project in which 1st-year students attended F2F sessions and engaged with an anonymous online questioning environment. The differences between students' F2F and online behaviour led to intended and unintended consequences. The purpose of this paper is to explore these intended and unintended consequences of technology use. The project was undertaken over a 3-year period, starting in 2004. In 2004, a pilot project was conducted based on a class of 35 students studying a 1st-year programming course in information systems. The investigation was again conducted in 2005 for the same course, this time with 63 students. In 2006, the project was extended to a class of 610 1st-year commerce students studying an introductory information systems course. In all cases, students met F2F and when online, engaged with an anonymous Web/SMS collaborative tool. The intended consequence was that a blending of F2F with online interaction extended student engagement beyond the limitation of a classroom and provided a forum for further collaboration and consultation. The intended outcome was achieved. An unintended consequence was that the tool provided the lecturer with diagnostic information that was used to impact on pedagogical designs. This was often a result of students taking on an online personality that would very often be extremely frank and honest about the manner in which the course was conducted, and how learning was taking place. The findings show that students used the tool in ways that exceeded the envisaged intention, and student use of the tool positively impacted on the curriculum, pedagogy and general running of the course. The paper concludes that integration of online engagement with F2F teaching adds value to the teaching and learning experience.
e-Assessment cannot benefit learners, and so education, unless it supports them in doing something differently in future. What, however, are learners trying to do better? This paper adopts a perspective in which learners simultaneously self-regulate multiple variables that are relevant to learning, and develops a theoretical argument that a key issue is the ambiguity of feedback events (such as a failed task or a poor mark) as to which variable should be adjusted. A common tacit assumption is that the relevant loop is about technical expertise, but in reality, students must and do also adjust effort, learning methods and course choices. Two methods for helping learners by resolving this ambiguity are discussed: telling learners directly which interpretation is relevant, and structuring learning activities to focus on one variable. Which loops are most important to learners generally shifts in the transition from school to university, implying that the role of feedback also changes. e-Assessment needs a major rethink to address these needs, and to understand why feedback is so often apparently ignored by students. Conversely, attending to all these loops would be to open new dialogues with learners.
The supervision of undergraduate student dissertations is an area in need of research. Although some studies have already addressed this, these are primarily based on academic staff responses. This study contributes to knowledge by gathering the responses of students and focusing on formative electronic assessment. Data was collected using a student focus group and student questionnaire. Unsurprisingly, the findings suggest that good supervisor–student communication is crucial to the supervision process and a number of students felt unhappy with this aspect. However, to facilitate this communication, the perceived absolute necessity of regular supervisor–student meetings is being questioned and a combination of technology-enabled communication is advocated. It is suggested that to improve the undergraduate student dissertation experience, a combination of face-to-face and electronic formative assessment is used. In addition, the blended e-learning skeleton of conversation model provides a sound theoretical framework that could guide supervisors and students in the supervision process. This model is advocated for use in dissertation module design and in supervisor development.
One technology for education whose adoption is currently expanding rapidly in UK higher education is that of electronic voting systems (EVS). As with all educational technology, whether learning benefits are achieved depends not on the technology but on whether an improved teaching method is introduced with it. EVS inherently relies on the multiple-choice question (MCQ) format, which many feel is associated with the lowest kind of learning of disconnected facts. This paper, however, discusses several ways in which teaching with MCQs, and so with EVS, has transcended this apparent disadvantage, has based itself on deep learning in the sense of focusing on learning relationships between items rather than on recalling disconnected true–false items, and so has achieved substantial learning advantages. Six possible learning designs based on MCQs are discussed, and a new function for (e-)assessment is identified, namely catalytic assessment, where the purpose of test questions is to trigger subsequent deep learning without direct teaching input.
This paper reports a study aimed at revealing special-educational-needs pupils' learning potential by means of an ICT-based assessment including a dynamic visual tool that might help pupils when solving mathematics problems. The study focused on subtraction problems up to 100, which require ‘borrowing’. These problems, in which the value of the ones-digit of the subtrahend is larger than the ones-digit of the minuend, are known as a serious difficulty for weak pupils in mathematics. Seven of such problems from a standardised test were placed in the ICT environment. Data were collected from two test conditions: the standardised written test format and the ICT version of the test items including the tool that provided pupils with a set of virtual manipulatives. The 37 pupils involved in the study were 8–12 years old and from two special-education schools in the Netherlands. Comparison of the performance scores in the two formats showed that an ICT-based assessment format, including a dynamic visual tool, can reveal weak pupils' learning potential and strategy use. The study also pointed out that ‘partial-tool use’, ie, not carrying out the complete subtraction operation with the tool, can provide sufficient support to find the correct answer.
While a number of studies have been conducted on the impact of online assessment and teaching methods on student learning, the field does not seem settled around the promised benefits of such approaches. It is argued that the reason for this state of affairs is that few studies have been able to control for a number of confounding factors in student performance. We report on the introduction of a regular (every 3 weeks) low-mark online assessment tool in a large, first-year business mathematics course at the University of New South Wales, a major Australian university. Using a retrospective regression methodology together with a very large and rich data set, we test the proposition that exposure to the online assessment instrument enhances student learning. Significantly, we are able to control for prior student aptitude, in-course mastery, gender and even effort via a voluntary class attendance proxy. Furthermore, the study incorporates two large, and statistically diverse cohorts as well as manipulations in the model tested to robustly examine the outcomes. Our central result is that higher exposure to the online instrument robustly leads to higher student learning, all else being equal. Various implications for online assessment design, implementation and targeting are also discussed.
According to the Quality Assurance Agency, ‘Assessment describes any processes that appraise an individual's knowledge, understanding, abilities or skills’, and is inextricably linked to a course or programme's intended learning outcomes. It also has a fundamental effect on students' learning where it serves a variety of purposes including evaluation, feedback and motivation. Assessment also provides a performance indicator for both students and staff. E-assessment offers opportunities for creating innovative assessment practices that help engage students and increase their motivation for learning. The paper reports the findings of a qualitative study undertaken in the academic years 2006–07 and 2007–08 where a series of online summative assessments were introduced into a 1st-year financial accounting course. Feedback from students obtained from an evaluative survey and focus group interviews indicates that assessment played a significant role in the teaching/learning process. That is, students perceived a beneficial impact on learning, motivation and engagement.
Educators have long debated the usefulness (or otherwise) of final examinations; a debate that has typically revolved around the relative merits of closed-book exams, open-book exams, take-home exams or their substitution by some other assessment format (eg, project work). This paper adds a new dimension to the debate by considering how the final examination assessment instrument might be enhanced through harnessing the power of technology, more specifically, how the learner experience of the final examination might be made more authentic and, in the process, more constructively aligned with stated learning outcomes. The authors report on the latest findings of an ongoing research project evaluating the effectiveness of ‘open-book, open-web’ (OBOW) examinations delivered by an online university, vis-à-vis a closed-book, invigilated alternative. Earlier research had indicated that the OBOW model receives the strong endorsement of students in a number of respects, most particularly the quality of the learning outcomes.
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