Surviving the semester: Assessments

This semester I am handling around 3260 pieces of assessment, and in each case I like to return marks and personalised feedback to the students. That is a lot of marking, and a lot of feedback.

Admittedly, out of 3260 pieces of work I only hand mark around 60 (which are essays written under exam conditions), and the remaining 3200 are dealt with electronically, but they still need to be processed and the marks and feedback returned to the students. The feedback aspect of this process is particularly important as feedback on work is something that has generally been scored quite poorly in the UK National Student Survey - further information and data. So, there is a perceived need by the students to get feedback on their work, and there is also a need to provide feedback so students can see how to improve.

Ideally this whole process of marking and feedback would (and should) be handled by the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE - see Do you speak my language: V is for Volume, Vapourware, Virus, VoIP, VNC, VPN, VLE, Virtual Campus) - let's call it Chalkboard - but unfortunately it doesn't have that sort of capabilities.

Therefore, to provide the feedback that the students want I have to get a little creative and do some scripting (see Do you speak my language: S is for Server, SEO, SMTP, Script, SFTP, SSH, SEO, Shell, Site Map, Source Code, Software) not only to provide the feedback, but to also set the assessment up in the first place.

In the next few posts I am going to look at whole electronic assessment process from initial design, through marking and returning work to students.

Image Credits: Flickr

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