learning - Academic Conferences Limited

Alice Bird
unhappy about feeling obliged to mark electronically, whilst others had issues in dealing with specific
coursework types. Some members of staff also experienced difficulties in downloading very large files
submitted by students or in dealing with multiple file submissions. The findings, in terms of whether
students thought that submitting coursework electronically had enabled better and/or timelier
feedback, were inconclusive. A slight majority (39%) thought it had but 30% did not and the remaining
31% were unsure.
When asked to rate their overall experience, two thirds of students considered the experience to be
worthwhile or very worthwhile. A further 22% rated the experience as satisfactory whilst 11% believed
the experience to be not worthwhile or (for two students) totally unsatisfactory. Despite the concerns
raised by staff, 48% rated their overall experience as worthwhile or very worthwhile. A further 24%
found the experience to be satisfactory but 28% considered their experience to be not worthwhile or
totally unsatisfactory. In addition, staff continued to reiterate concerns about health and safety, issues
with printing and overall capacity to cope with any scaling up of e-submission activity.
The findings from the evaluation demonstrated a need to accommodate the diversity in needs
between staff and students. Many on both sides acknowledged benefits but the balance was swung in
favour of students, in terms of convenience and savings to them. As a consequence, the Project
Board developed a proposed ‘third way’ forward that would require, as a minimum expectation, esubmission
for some but not all items of coursework. Hence, the main recommendation was for a
phased implementation in 2010/11 based on the types of coursework item identified as most suitable,
in the pilot study, for submitting electronically. This included items meeting the following criteria:
A single file
In Word or pdf format
Of no more than 2000 words
Submitted before the end of main assessment period
It was believed that assessments meeting these criteria would be more appropriate for academic staff
to test out e-marking, to develop other steps in the submission/feedback process and to look at
alternative approaches to delivering feedback electronically, e.g. voice feedback. This
recommendation was approved by the strategic management group along with the agreement to
implement the customisation of the native VLE assignment tool.
During the pilot study, the influence of the student voice on strategic engagement in institutional
decision-making gained greater significance. A second NUS Higher Education Campaign, NUS
(2009), focused on improvements to assessment and feedback and identified ten principles on which
good feedback should be based. In addition, Government sponsorship for defining ‘a reasonable
student experience’, through the National Student Forum, further raised the need for improved
feedback on assessment along with some fundamental changes to teaching and learning organisation
and practice in universities, NSF (2009). (The continued strategic contribution by students, at a
national level, is evidenced in the report commissioned by HEFCE through the NUS on students’
perspectives of technology in learning, teaching and assessment, as part of the Online Task Force
consultation, HEFCE (2010)).
In the current case, the Student Union developed its own version of ten ways to make feedback better
based on consultation with students. This was presented to the Academic Board, in May 2010, in the
form of a printed document with real examples of positive and negative student experiences. The first
three objectives were approved for implementation. These included a requirement for feedback
deadlines to be published along with assessment, all feedback to be made available three weeks after
the deadline and all feedback to relate to assessment criteria. Of these three objectives, the three
week turnaround for feedback proved most contentious, with academic staff feeling that they had not
been consulted in the decision-making process. As a sense of disempowerment emerged, academic
staff became more aware of greater student influence and apparent collusion between strategic
management and students in decision-making processes. This was further enhanced by other
institutional changes to the academic framework and administrative processes which culminated in a
feeling of initiative overload from the member of academic staff perspective.
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