Nicola Billam, Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown

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Engaging Students in Formative Assessment
Strategies and Outcomes
Nicola Billam, Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown Martin
Sellens CAA Conference 2006
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Overview of the Project

• Student Portal Resources for Innovative Targeted
  Assessment
• Funded through the Higher Education Funding
  Council for England (HEFCE)
• FDTL-5
• November 2004 October 2006
• Dr Martin Sellens (Director)
• Nicola Billam (Project Officer)

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What is SPRInTA?

• Unfavourable staff/student ratios-affecting
  support on assessment and feedback given
• Sports Science 8 staff 75 undergraduates per
  year-9.4 students per member of staff
• Large classes
• Lots of marking
• National Student Satisfaction Survey Essex-low
  score on quality and time for turnaround of
  feedback

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What is SPRInTA?

• Support student assessment by providing
  formative, targeted and personalised online
  support for assessment
• Facilitate independent study and self assessment
• On completion-15 Sports Science/Biological
  Science courses will be able to access a suite of
  online self assessment exercises and tutorial
  guidance
• All of these resources will be linked through the
  myEssex student portal

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How?

• SPRInTA will design and develop online
  self-assessment and tutorial guidance for five
  types of assessment common to Sports Science
  students
• Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
• Short answer and essay style practice
  examinations
• Data Analysis Interpretation
• Practical Coursework (worksheets)
• Reporting in Scientific Paper Format

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Progress to Date

• The MCQ section is now complete
• Currently working on the other sections (tutorial
  guidance)
• MCQs
• Provided online MCQ formative assessments for 8
  Level 1 modules
• 300-600 formative Multiple Choice Questions
  (MCQs)-using QuestionMark Perception, linked into
  the portal
• Split course material into week blocks and
  release after final lecture of the week
• Tiered difficulty of questions
• Summative Exam Online (end of module MCQ exam)

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Progress cont.

• 94 of students recommend online self-assessments
  for all level 1 modules
• 76 of students agree that SPRInTA assessments
  have aided their learning
• Significant improvement in summative MCQ exam
  results from previous year (plt0.01, t-test)
• Significant positive correlation between the
  number of formative assessments a student
  completes and their summative MCQ exam score
  (plt0.05, t-test)
• Significant improvement seen in the summer essay
  based exam (plt0.05, t-test)

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Student Engagement-Pilot
Fig 1 Number of formative assessments completed
per week in the BS155 pilot
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Strategies for Engagement

• Publicity Key rings, alerts
• Feedback Removal of correct answer
• Release dates Weekly
• Release pattern
• Module A-Questions closed after two weeks
• Module B-Open for the duration of the term

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Results

• Engagement still high 81.4
• Significant improvement in exam results when
  compared to previous years (plt0.01)
• Survey demonstrated 97 of thought the questions
  were well publicised (previously 73)
• 76 of students found the PowerPoint slide useful

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Results cont

• No change in engagement
• Completed assessments in week leading up to exam
  
• Pilot- 88.6
• Module A- 68.2 (2 week release pattern)
• Module B- 56
• The change in scheduling was not popular with the
  students

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Fig 2 Number of completed formative assessments
by week number for Module A. The Summative Exam
was at 10am on the Tuesday of Week 11
Fig 3 Number of completed formative assessments
by week number for Module B. The Summative Exam
was at 10am on the Monday of Week 11
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Conclusion

• Students like freedom of choice with regards to
  study time
• Students appear to take a strategic approach to
  learning/revision
• Further work is needed with regard to engaging
  students throughout the term
• Summative component
• Ranking
• Just in time Teaching

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• QUESTIONS?
• Contact
• E-mail sprinta_at_essex.ac.uk
• Tel (87)4369
• Web http//www.essex.ac.uk/sprinta/
• Presentation can be found at http//www.essex.ac.
  uk/sprinta/publications.htm