Personalised laboratory feedback

Example of marks and feedback workflow

An example feedback workflow used by an academic from Chemistry. (A) In class, demonstrators use the mobile app to grade and provide rapid feedback. (B) The coordinator designs personalised messages with feedback that match with the possible options in the app. (C) Students receive a personalised email with feedback targeted to their learning and development needs.

Our students have physical sample submissions which are marked in SRES. Each experiment has a multi-entry column with ‘select from list’ rows (displayed as descriptions, but saved values as per the marking scheme) and a text box row for individual student feedback. I have an aggregator column to add the marks together.

Students also submit reports through Blackboard. These are marked in Grade Centre and I ‘bulk import’ the Blackboard Grade Centre numbers into SRES. There are a couple of examples where the rubric is out of the wrong number of ‘points’ so I have aggregator columns in SRES to fix the number of marks assigned to the report.

I then use ‘student views’ (web portals) deployed in Blackboard to release the results to the students. Not every student does every experiment so what they see is filtered by which experiment they have been assigned (this data exists in another SRES column). They get their results mark and individual feedback, plus their report mark.

Benefits

  • Students get their results earlier. Previously they didn’t always receive results for things marked outside blackboard.
  • Students get individual feedback for their results (previously they didn’t get this at all)
  • Any missing results can be followed up quickly. The students are quick to notice and alert us if marks are missing!
  • Marks are collated as we go. This will hopefully make end of semester/board of examiners much easier for us.
Award-winning approach

2022 Exemplar in Jisc Principles of good assessment and feedback report
2021
 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report Learning Analytics exemplar
2020 Reimagine Education ICT Tools for Learning and Teaching Award Gold Winner
2019 Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning
2019 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report Analytics Technology exemplar
2017 Pearson ACODE Award for Innovation in Technology Enhanced Learning
2016 ASCILITE Innovation Award winner
2015 Reimagine Education ICT Tools Awards (Finalist)
2015 ASCILITE Awards for Excellence in Learning Analytics (Finalist)

Made by teachers, with love
We are teachers. We work on the SRES in our spare time, without any funding, because we believe in enhancing teacher-student relationships by using data in a meaningful and context-sensitive way.