Emma Mayhew (Academic Director, EMA) and Maria Papaefthimiou (Senior TEL Advisor) headed north this week to the Blackboard Users’ Conference at the University of Durham. This is one of the most popular events attracting a large number of learning technologists and some academic colleagues across the sector. Emma and Maria presented to 65 colleagues in a session entitled ‘Small and Medium Go Large: Electronic Management of Assessment at the University of Reading’. This presentation outlined EMA adoption across the sector, key challenges faced by institutions moving from pocketed to institution wide online assessment practices and some of Reading’s own experiences from the PEAR Project to the EMA Programme, from pocketed adoption through to staged Early Adopters and fuller roll out. Some of the key messages outlined in this presentation seemed to be really thought provoking given the long queue of colleagues queuing up to ask Emma and Maria questions at the end of their session. This conference also gave some colleagues within...

After 7 months of preparation, development and testing, the Core Systems workstream celebrated the go-live of sub modular marks for UG Modules with the first mark-entry training session for Programme Administrators. The sessions, led by the Core Systems workstream, are being held throughout December, January and February in order to support Programme Administrators with the new mark entry processes in RISIS. Now that sub modular marks are in RISIS, the Core Systems team can continue the roll-out of a number of new screens for staff and students. The student mark screen, which will be available on the RISIS portal, gives students access to an online summary of all summative assessment marks during the course of the year. Until now, students have only been given an overall mark for a module at the end of each year, but with this new screen they will also be able to see the breakdown of how the overall mark was achieved; this includes marks for essays,...

Jonathan Smith is the School Director for Technology Enhanced Learning in ISLI. He is also a Pre-sessional English Course Director and Teacher of English. Jonathan is a seasoned user of TurnItIn for electronic submission, feedback and grading. Listen to his chat with Academic Partner Pilar Gray-Carlos to find more about when he started, some of the difficulties he encountered as well as the benefits he found from using e-assessment and marking. You can also visit our EMA Case Studies page and learn about other colleagues experiences. Listen to the interview with Jonathan....

Professor Will Hughes Professor Will Hughes has extensively used rubric grids within Grademark across of all of his modules to significantly enhance student engagement with his feedback, student understanding of his marking criteria and student attainment in subsequent essays whilst making his own experience of marking more efficient. Read Will's Case Study....

The Core Systems Work Stream held a fourth breakfast briefing for all Programme Administrative colleagues today. Nearly 60 members of staff from across the institution were able to join us for breakfast cake and coffee to hear Kat Lee, Project Manager for the Core Systems Work Stream, outline progress during this enormously busy period. Kat and team have been working hard to implement new functionality in RISIS. Supported by Programme Administrators and Exams colleagues, all final testing has been completed and we are now ready for the go-live of sub-modular marking in the last week of November, covering undergraduate modules. A ‘Turn Around Time Tracking’ screen for 15 day feedback and marks return is now live for undergraduate summative assessment and will be accessible to SDTLs via reports shortly. We are in the very final stages of creating the updated extenuating circumstances workflow, allowing students to submit ECFs online via RISIS much more easily. We are now using the RISIS helpdesk...

Kat Lee, lead for the Core Systems Work Stream, and Emma Mayhew attended the Autumn term School of Law meeting and the Humanities School Board of Teaching and Learning. Emma ran through our new deliverables graphic, based on the JISC/Manchester Met assessment and feedback cycle. This shows how the EMA Programme is delivering at every stage of the cycle, from design through to setting, marking, recording and reflection, improving the assessment experience of both staff and students throughout. Kat outlined the timetable of key events marking our move towards improved sub modular mark availability. She demonstrated the new RISIS screens available for module convenors and personal tutors as well as some of the new assessment reporting capability, a significant step forward for the University in terms of our ability to understand the assessment landscape. Emma and Kat’s updates prompted a series of questions, as well as excitement, from both schools covering a range of topics from data access to future developments in both...

Over the past three months the EMA programme has recruited three Graduate Partners, joining the team to provide vital student insight and champion the interests of the student body within all programme activity. Working across each of the programme work-streams, the Graduate Partner team are dedicated to ensuring that EMA has an ever-present student voice, looking to gain informed perspectives from existing students at every opportunity, and contributing valuable insight from their own experiences as University of Reading students. For more information on the EMA team, go to the ‘Our Partners’ tab.  Alternatively, if you have any questions for our Graduate Partners, please contact: student.ema@reading.ac.uk...