Category: News

Amanda Cockayne is Programme Director of the PGCE Primary programme in the Institute of Education.   In this interview, Amanda talks about her experience adapting to electronically managing assessment and, in particular, the measures she's taken to help with marking onscreen....

The EMA Programme have created an Online Resource Map in liaison with colleagues from the Technology Enhanced Learning and Academic Development and Enhancement Teams. This map, found here, provides direct links for academic colleagues and professional staff to key university resources ordered around the Assessment and Feedback lifecycle (developed by JISC/Manchester Metropolitan University). The Map is a Live document, and will be updated regularly with new resources and content. We would really welcome your feedback on this new resource. Please contact Emma Mayhew, Academic Director of the EMA Programme, at e.a.mayhew@reading.ac.uk....

About Quickmarks A ‘quickmark’ is a tailor-made bubble comment which tutors tend to use repeatedly when marking and which can be stored in your personal ‘quickmark manager’ on the Feedback Studio so you can simply drag and drop onto assignments time and time again. There are some comments which tend to be common with tutors, particularly across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and these often focus on topics such as referencing, structure, style and critical analysis. A quickmark can provide feedback on these generic issues very efficiently but, because it is used repeatedly, it needs to be of maximum use to any student who reads it. Using hyperlinks to informative websites is a good way of doing this. Download Quickmarks A group of colleagues from Study Advice and the EMA Programme team have produced four sets of generic quickmarks on the topics of referencing, structure, style and critical analysis. Most of them contain hyperlinks to sections of the study advice website where students...

Dear Colleagues,   This year the Electronic Management of Assessment Programme (EMA) is helping schools across the University to adopt new electronic submission, feedback and grading processes. For many schools and departments the majority of changes will be centred around programme administrative processes.   For schools or departments that have done less, or no electronic marking, there may be a greater level of change, however support is being provided by colleagues from the TEL team to ensure that the impact of this change is reduced. Training will be advertised on the Employee Self Service Portal.   Attached to this email are two documents: An Introduction for Academics to electronic submission feedback and grading. A Roles and Responsibilities Guide designed to help colleagues, both academic and support centre, to understand who does what, and when, in the electronic submission, feedback and grading processes being introduced by the EMA Programme. The guide has been produced in partnership with a large number of academic colleagues and support centre staff,...

On Tuesday 4th September 2018, 74 colleagues representing 34 UK Higher Education institutions attended the EMA Programme, ‘Remaking Marking Conference’ in the Meadow Suite. The conference enabled colleagues from across the sector to come together to share good practice and to discuss challenges and opportunities involved in the implementation of electronic assessment. A series of guest speakers presented a summary of their institution’s approach to embedding EMA and a discussion of the effectiveness of this approach. Dr Rachel Maxwell, the Head of Learning & Teaching Development at University of Northampton, presented first and delivered a brief history of implementation at the University of Northampton followed by an overview of the pedagogical transformation that EMA delivered. Dr Maxwell included debate on a number of issues including the opportunity created by electronic management of assessment for colleagues across the sector to reflect on their assessment practices asking whether, for example, exams were more of a habit than geared towards the delivery of learning...

We are pleased to report that after detailed project scoping work, in late July the EMA Programme Board approved the initiation of work to create a Student Progress Dashboard. Requirements, plans and costings were presented to the board in a detailed Project Initiation Document. This is an exciting project that will further enhance sub modular marks information recently provided to students and staff in RISIS. The approval from the EMA Programme Board means that work can now move forward with designing and testing an online dashboard with graphical views of an individual student’s marks, and tools to help students understand and monitor their progress over time. This is a new venture for the University and so communications to students will be kept low key until work is further progressed. However, students and staff have been, and continue to be, consulted on what they would like to see. Student Focus Groups are identifying specific requirements for these tools and graphical views. The dashboard...

In this interview, Professor Cindy Becker talks about her experiences implementing audio feedback in her marking....

On Wednesday 27th June the EMA Programme held one of our regular 'Breakfast Briefings'. These sessions are an opportunity to bring colleagues together from professional services across the University to update them on the progress of the Core Systems, eSFG and Integration aspects of EMA.   For Core Systems, EMA colleagues outlined what the next steps would be for undergraduate modules; a focus on preparing for the next academic year and building on the great work done so far by all involved. It’s also the time to bring Postgraduate Taught and Foundation sub modular marks into SITS (RISIS). A lot of work is currently being done (and will continue over the coming months) to get them ready for September. The Team also provided an update on future plans, including; the roll out of EMA at foundation level for UoRM in January 2019, and hard-copy receipting and formative turnaround times, both expected in September.   For eSFG, there was the chance for attendees to view an...

The University is running a major programme to improve the experience of assessment for students and understanding the student perspective is extremely important. The EMA Programme recently started running small focus group discussions with a diverse range of students to explore how we could make better use of the data we now have on their assessment as a result of making sub modular marks available in RISIS.   We ran our first session in June with undergraduates and it proved a very informative and successful event.  During a frank and open discussion, participants shared their experiences and expectations of personal progress tracking tools both within educational contexts and outside of it: what they do well and what the challenges can be.  In the second half of the session, we ran some activities to uncover what features students would value and what approaches work well or less well.  Some of the comments were expected and intuitive, some less so, which is what makes...

On September 4th 2018, the EMA Programme is hosting a one-day national conference, at the University of Reading, exploring electronic management of assessment across the UK HE sector. This event brings together speakers from five UK institutions to support dissemination of knowledge and the sharing of good practice surrounding EMA defined broadly to include all aspects of technology enhanced assessment. We will explore the challenges and opportunities surrounding the introduction of EMA including change design, effect on policy and process, the optimal use of existing technology and evidenced impact on the staff and student experience. The event includes presentations focused on both online term time assessment and (although not within the scope of Reading’s own EMA Programme) digital exams. The conference is being run in association with the new Advance HE Interdisciplinary Network for Research-informed Assessment Practices group and is taking place in the Meadow Suite from 10.30-15.45. University of Reading colleagues are warmly welcomed and are able to sign up using Employee Self Service. Colleagues external to Reading are able...