Blackboard world Europe 2008 (2): Assignment submission

Right then, some more from the past Blackboard conference, as promised...

I attended 2 very interesting talks around a building block developed for Sheffield Hallam University called: 'The Assignment Handler'. It is basically an extention of the gradebook functionallity that already exists within Blackboard.

Sheffield Hallam have decided on a policy that all grades should be fed back to students in a central place, together with feedback. The central place they chose was the Blackboard gradebook. To do that they implemented the following features:

• A transparent and consistent handling of online exams, online submitted exams and exams submitted through the assignment handling office. All these can be set on Bb, submission is logged on Bb, and results and feedback are published through bb. this creates a central place where student process can be comprehensively managed (by staff and students)
• Some bulk-upload and download functionality. Assignments are renamed using module codes and student numbers. Feedback and marks can be uploaded in a single archive, which is useful with larger cohorts.
  
• The option to withold a mark until the student has reflected on, and responded to, the feedback provided. The University is now researching to what extend this actually motivates students to engage genuinely with their feedback.
• Generation of confirmation e-mails as receipts of submission
• Support for group assignments
  

As we have just started to look into a structural sollution around online submission ourselves, this presentation was brilliantly timed. There was a lot of mumbling in the audience on the non-responsiveness from Blackboard on this issue, as many institutions have requested functionality like this before. and in all fairness, most of it is pretty generic and sensible and should probably have been part of the core product for years. In stead it is now a buildingblock that Blackboard will most likely charge us a nice extra fee for.

e-Assessment centre for the South-West?

Last Thursday I attended a conference / workshop that was exploring the business case of setting up an e-Assessment centre in the South West of England. The conference was organised by Dr. Kevin Hapeshi from the University of Gloustershire with talks from Denise Whitelock (always inspiring) and myself. I must say my presentation skills are somewhat out fo practice, and I coudl have probably done with reviewing the art of speaking.

The day took an unexpected turn during the afternoon sessions, where we were going to discuss the details of a regional e-assessment centre. Both work groups came to the surprising conclusion that perhaps this was actually not such a good idea after all. There are plenty of challenges that we need to face in this domain, but none of them really benefit from a regional approach.

The biggest challenge is the development of mature tools, standards and practice. I've blogged about this in the past ( see Standards in assessment, Open Source Assessment tools, The ideal assessment engine). This is not a challenge we can face as universities, or regions however, it is something that requires (inter-) national collaboration. Many of the other challenges are institutional. They revolve around generating awareness and changing culture and practice. This is not something you can do from the outside. We find it hard to change practice on other other campuses of the University. Changing practice requires a proximity to practitioners, and to the learning and teaching strategies and strategic stakeholders. I don't think that proximity is something you can achieve with a regional (and thus external) centre.

There are of course hybrid models, whereby Universities could collaborate in virtual networks, nominating and funding members of their own staff to work in and with the centre. but this might just all become a rather artificial model tailored mostly towards fitting the proposed solution, and not the problem.

FREMA

At a JISC meeting this Thursday I was reminded of the FREMA project. I had been aware of their attempts to map the domain of e-Assessment for a number of years now, but I was not aware of some recent developments. Most interesting to me was their use of a semantic wiki. I had never heard of the concept in all honesty, but I found the idea fascinating. In particular for the purpose of Knowledge management and dissemination I think the possibilities here are truly significant.

for the FREMA project in particular, one of the things they were able to do as a result of using this technology, is a gap analysis of their understanding of the domain, but also of the available solutions within the domain. Unfortunately there are still quite a few gaps to be filled in the area of e-assessment, but at least through resources like these we can maximize our efficiency in finding existing solutions, and focusing our efforts on those gaps where the needs are most pressing.