customisable online academic skills self-assessment: development and initial feedback steve briggs...
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Customisable Online Academic Skills Self-Assessment:
Development and Initial Feedback
Steve Briggs
Nick Collis
Nigel Upton
Session Overview
• Rationale for developing the resource
• Demonstration of the resource
– Tutor perspective– Student perspective– Running reports
• Feedback
• Next steps
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Rationale• Historically, the Professional and Academic Development
(PAD) Team have provided a self-assessment booklet for students commencing undergraduate study.
• The booklet focused on key academic skills including:
– Writing– ICT– Maths– Time management and organisation
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Rationale II
• By working through the booklet, students assessed how confident they felt about different aspects of studying
• Students also completed exercises to provide an insight into their performance related to basic academic skills
• If students identified areas where they lacked confidence / competence they were encouraged to access online resources / services provided by PAD
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Benefits of the Booklet
• Encouraged independent learning
• Introduction to PDP
• Source of service promotion
• Could be a scheduled induction exercise
• However, whilst we found the concept of the booklet to be sound we experienced problems associated with the paper format
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Issues with the Paper Format• Cost
• Non-subject specific
• Distribution time
• Fixed content once printed
• Catering for last minute requests from academics
• Relevance of content to certain courses (e.g. Maths)
• Self-assessment meant that trends were not identified amongst student groups
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An Online Solution
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• Given the issues associated with a paper self-assessment resource we considered whether a technology based solution could be applied
• After conversation with our Learning Technology team it was decided that an online version of the self-assessment (delivered through Blackboard and built using learning units) would be developed
• This would address many of the problems that had previously been encountered
• It would also enable trends to be identified in academic skill development needs
Demonstration
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Early Adopters
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• Academics who approached PAD requesting copies of our self-assessment booklet were sent a copy of the online self-assessment package
• We promoted awareness of the package through arranging departmental demonstrations
• Details of the package were included in University induction guidelines – as an option that could be used
Initial Dissemination
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• We were concerned that PAD / Learning Technology could be inundated with ICT requests related to the self-assessment package
• We therefore made it clear that ownership and responsibility for revising content sat with academic teams
• PAD would provide limited assistance with content when requested
• Learning Technology would provide assistance around installation / running of reports
Outcomes – Learning Development Team
• As anticipated:
– Dissemination of the resource to academics has become much more straightforward – forward instructions email with attached zip file
– Typos have been easily corrected when identified
– Significant cost saving
– Requests have easily been catered for
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Outcomes - Academics
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“The package itself is great - but as usual it [problems] is to do with implementation”
(Senior Lecturer – Faculty of Business)
Issues that emerged
• Lead time needed to implement
• Staff having the time to customise content
• Course team engagement / championing within faculty
• Integration with other systems (such as PebblePad)
• Student completion not made compulsory
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Moving Forward• Increase the range of template questions to make the resource more
resistant to non-customised use by academics. This will be done by requesting input from Librarians / Computer Skills Training / Language Centre)
• The Centre for Learning Excellence will include details of the package in induction guidance that academic departments should follow
• We plan to work closely with early adopters who in turn we hope will become our ‘champions’
• The package will be as a source of evidence for justifying a request for on course academic skills teaching delivered by learning resources teams
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Questions
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