JISC

Supporting staff in the use of Technology for Assessing and giving Feedback (STAF)

Overview

With some notable exceptions, the take-up of technology to support improvements in marking and giving feedback has been slow. Our VLE supports objective testing and assignment submission, and is integrated with Turnitin for originality reports, peer review and online marking. Barriers to change in assessment practices include staff workloads with large courses, work habits, concerns about losing personal contact with students, and the variety of needs of different programmes and assessment types. New technologies including audio, video (screencasts), and voice recognition are not widely known. The project will provide the resources needed to make significant progress across the institution.

Aims and objectives

The aim is to develop the uses of existing technologies and support academic staff in their uses, so as to improve assessment and feedback for staff and students. The objectives are to develop a portfolio of assessment and feedback processes that take advantage of technology and support their adoption by academic schools and individual academic staff. This includes the wider use of our existing facilities for online assessment and feedback, and the introduction of novel assessment practices including handwriting recognition, audio and video.

Project methodology

The project is based within the educational development unit, the LDU, and is sponsored by the Pro-VC. It will appoint a project officer by internal secondment and make good use of the existing LDU staff and a network of educational developers and learning technologists across the university. A steering group of senior academics will ensure integration with all three Faculties. The Head of the LDU is project manager and the project will deliver four work packages addressing the objectives.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

The outputs and outcomes are to:

1. Increase awareness of JISC resources internally, and how JISC outputs and services can support institutional strategic objectives.
2. Develop a portfolio of technology supported assessment processes, including new assessment processes with novel (to Keele) technology, and support academic schools in reviewing their assessment processes
3. Support academic staff in using technology-supported and novel assessment and feedback practices, and evaluate student and staff experiences of changed assessment and feedback practices
4. Provide case studies, resources and guides for other institutions