Most of us have had formal or informal feedback throughout our lives. The way in which we have been assessed very likely has had a fundamental effect on our learning and career progression. Assessment is one of the most important parts of learning and teaching and whether institutions get this right or wrong has a huge impact on students’ lives and careers.

JISC’s new guide Effective Assessment in a Digital Age demonstrates how technology can significantly improve the experience of assessment and feedback. As many higher education institutions are reviewing their assessment strategies, JISC is looking at the transformative effects of technology that increase learner autonomy, enhances the quality of the assessment experience and improves teaching efficiency.  Also see Online resources associated with this publication

“Why do we still insist that students, who mostly use technologies such as laptops and mobile phones when researching their assignments, sit down with pen and paper and write long essays when they are assessed?” asks Ros Smith, the author of the guide. “This one size fits all view of assessment still dominates. Perhaps instead we should be thinking much more creatively and be inspired by what technology can do. There are huge benefits to be gained, for example, in giving students choice over assignment formats, allowing them either to write a 5000 word essay on a topic or to put together a video or audio piece that explores different points of view. Students disadvantaged by traditional written assessments will clearly benefit from this approach but everyone gains if the use of different media prompts deeper thought around the topic.”

Listen to a podcast with Ros Smith, author of Effective Assessment in a Digital Age (Duration 13:29)
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In addition, educational researchers since the 1990s have increasingly argued that assessment should be used to support learning rather than just test and certify achievement. This has shifted the emphasis from the teacher to the learner, as David Nicol, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Strathclyde, explains: “We tend to think of feedback as something a teacher provides, but if students are to become independent lifelong learners, they have to become better at judgingtheir own work. If you really want to improve learning, get students to give one another feedback. Giving feedback is cognitively more demanding than receiving feedback. That way, you can accelerate learning.”

Technology provides ways of enabling students to monitor the standards of their own work. The technology can be designed for the purpose (such ason-screen assessment delivery systems or originality checking software) or adopted from a pool of widely available generic and often open source software and familiar hardware (such as digital cameras or handheld devices). Sarah Davies, JISC e-Learning Programme Manager, says: “Technologies such as voting systems, online discussion forums, wikis and blogs allow practitioners to monitor levels of understanding and thus make better use of face-to-face contact time. Delivery of feedback through digital audio and video, or screen-capture software, may also save time and improve learners’ engagement with feedback.”

Effective Assessment in a Digital Age outlines some of the key benefits

• better dialogue and communication that can overcome distance and time constraints
• immediate and learner-led assessment through interactive online tests and tools in the hand (such as voting devices and internet connected mobile phones)
• authenticity through online simulations and video technologies and risk-free rehearsal of real-world skills in professional and vocational education
• fast and easy processing and transferring of data
• improved thinking and ownership through peer assessment, collection of evidence and reflection on achievements in e-portfolios
• making visible skills and learning processes that were previously difficult to measure
• a personal quality to feedback, even in large-group contexts

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In all our work, we support openness, sustainable technology and making innovative choices. In this spirit of progression, JISC publications will only be available in digital formats in the future. Printed copies of Effective Assessment in a Digital Age can be ordered free until end of October 2010.

A clever tool bar designed to help students with literacy difficulties to interact with text on screen is helping schools, universities and colleges to save money across the UK and internationally.

MyStudyBar is the latest initiative from the JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East and consists of a collection of freeware and open source software which is specially selected to help students with literacy difficulties (planning, reading, writing, vision and voice). Although MyStudyBar is designed to support learners with literacy-related difficulties such as dyslexia, the toolbar can offer potential benefits to all learners.

Thousands of downloads from as far afield as New Zealand and Australia equal savings of more than half a million pounds as the commercially equivalent price of the applications on a single MyStudyBar download is around £120. Garth Ritchie from the Ministry of Education, New Zealand, comments that the package “will make it easier to get assistive technology to the students in schools for whom it would not be considered otherwise. [JISC’s] work has direct spinoffs for inclusive education around the world.”

The tool bar includes a range of tools to support inclusion such as mind mapping, screen masking, word prediction, talking dictionary, text-to-speech, different saving options and voice recognition.  Together, these have been designed to support the complete study cycle from research, planning and structuring to getting across a written or spoken message.

Since it was launched in early 2010, thousands of individuals and organisations have downloaded MyStudyBar, from the John Moores University in Liverpool to the Fundación Todos Podemos Ayudar in Colombia. As Andrew Edis from New College Nottingham comments, “We have already distributed 16,000 USB sticks containing free and open source software from the RSC Scotland North & East, right across the college. I must say I’m impressed with this - in times of financial squeeze the fact that MyStudyBar is open source is a major plus.”

MyStudyBar has been produced by the same team at RSC Scotland North & East which created the award-winning AccessApps software suite.

The aim is to use social networking and mobile technologies to foster a sense of community in the Strand area of central London through a technique known as life-writing.

Life-writing is a broad and creative field which explores personal life stories, and how they intersect with accounts of the lives of others. Residents, business owners and employees working in the area will all be visited by researchers from the JISC project, Strandlines Digital Community based at King’s College London.

The researchers will also visit local community centres and events, digitise materials from the King’s archives and interview staff at King’s and launch a website in the autumn to generate contributions.

Ben Showers, programme manager at JISC, said: “We urgently need to engage communities with the research going on in universities and colleges to ensure that we really maximise these publicly funded resources and findings.  But the benefits go both ways - so the training provided by Strandlines and similar projects is helping to create a more technology savvy population who are more confident in contributing to the web.

“While the Strandlines project is engaging a community in the heart of London, the approach it uses will form a valuable model for similar work across the UK,” he concluded.

The project will create an online, interactive resource documenting life and work on the Strand over the past 200 years, through stories, audio and photographs. It will combine material taken from the College’s own archive, Westminster City Archives and elsewhere with people’s own photographs and memories, captured through a grassroots digitisation project.

Professor Clare Brant, project director working at the centre for life-writing research, said: “One aim of the project is to investigate the significance of the Strand in people’s life stories. Life-writing is a little different from oral history: while both value information about the past, life-writing also encourages awareness of literary and creative characteristics in the present, and how these may shape accounts of the past. At the Centre for Life-Writing Research, we look forward to learning about the Strand from others who live and work here; and to helping people explore new ways and new media in which to share their impressions of life on the Strand.”

Download a booklet about crowd sourcing and how it worksLorna Hughes, project manager at the centre for e-research at King’s, said: "Web 2.0 technologies have created new and easy ways of bringing together communities and allowing them to engage with each other. We are excited about the chance to explore how these approaches can make the Strand come alive in the digital world." 

Benn Keaveney, chief executive at Age UK Westminster, said: "The concept of memory, storytelling and making use of new technology being made available for our service users is something we are already investigating, and so we are keen to see what further work could arise out of this local project in the Strand area of Westminster."

The project has been organised by the Centre for Life-Writing Research, the Centre for e-Research, the Department of Geography and the King's College London Archives and will initially run as an 11 month pilot. Partner organisations include the City of Westminster Archives Centre and the charity Age UK Westminster.

For further information, or if you would like to contribute material for the project, please contact Lorna Hughes, email lorna.hughes@kcl.ac.uk or telephone 0207 8482426.

Find out more about the community collections that JISC is running

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Listen to a pilot recording about the miners' leader Mabon and the campaign for better working conditions

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