Efficient Assessment: Streamlining online assessment and developing tools to improve student feedback

With growing student numbers and a limited staff, the Fashion with Business Studies team has had to re-think our approach to marking large volumes of assignments. At the Curriculum Development Review in 2019, assessment choices for students were expanded, introducing the option to give a live presentation to staff members instead of submitting a written report. In this presentation we will explore how this has helped students to develop key employability skills and offer a useful alternative for those who have traditionally struggled with written assessments. As a staff team, the presentation format has allowed us to explore more efficient models of assessment including marking during the live presentation itself using a paper-based marking matrix (developed by Senior Lecturer in Professional Practice Joanna Zara). We will discuss how we have moved from the initial pilot in 2019-2020 using a paper-based system which proved cumbersome to digitise to an online assessment method in 2020-2021.

The online assessment coincided with the shift to remote teaching due to the pandemic. With an online course the live presentations were not possible. Instead, students pre-recorded their presentations. We will discuss how the flexibility for creating rubrics in Grade Centre, has allowed the team (with Learning Technologist Robin Englebright) to develop the paper-based marking matrix into a digital assessment tool which we have piloted again for module AGP491 in 2020-2021 and how this could be rolled out across all of our business modules in 2021-2022.

This pre-recorded presentation charts the development of the digital assessment tool and our reflections on how it has streamlined assessing times and, in doing so, enabled us to provide improved feedback to students.