## Another Assignment Module

"Assessment is the most powerful lever teachers have to influence the way students respond to courses and behave as learners"
from Graham Gibbs, "Using Assessment Strategically to Change the Way Students Learn" in "Asessment Matter in Higher Education, edited by Sally Brown and Angela Glasner, OU Press, 1999

### Overview

This new module enables the teacher to set up a controlled assignment which encourages students to become more critical of both their own work and that of others. In its standard form, the module usually begins with a preparatory phase where the teacher sets up the assessment criteria. These will depend on which assessment strategy the teacher decides to use for the assignment. There are four separate strategies:

1. No grading: In this type of assignment the teacher is not interested in quantative assessment from the students at all. The students make comments of the pieces of works but not not grade them. The teacher, however, can, if desired, grade the student comments. These "grading grades" form the basis of the students' final grades. If the teacher does not grade the student assessments then the assignment does not have any final grades.
2. Accumulative grading: This is the default type of grading. In this type of assignment the grade of each assessment is made up of a number of "assessment elements". Each element should cover a particular aspect of the assignment. Typically an assignment will have something between 5 to 15 elements for comments and grading, the actual number depending on the size and complexity of the assignment. A peer assignment with only one element is allowed and has a similar assessment strategy to the standard Moodle Assignment.
3. Error Banded Grading: In this type of assignment the submissions are graded on a set of Yes/No scales. The grade is determined by the "Grade Table " which gives the relationship between the number of "errors" and the suggested grade. For example an assignment may have six significant items which should be present, the Grade Table will give suggested grades if all are present, one is absent, if two are absent, etc.
4. Criteria Grading: This is simpliest type of assessment to grade (although not necessarily the most straightforward to set up). The submissions are graded against a set of criterion statments. The assessor choses which statement best fits the piece of work. The grade is determined by a "Criteria Table" which gives the suggested grade for each criterion.

Next the teacher submits a small number (probably between 5 and 10) example pieces of work. These most likely have been gleaned from previous cohorts and should probably include both good and poor attempts at the assignment.
Lastly the teacher assesses these examples using the "grading form" set up for the asssignment. The teacher's assessments are there to guide the students when they start the assignment.
With these three sets of items in place, the assessment elements (and possibly the associated grade table), the example assignments and the specimen assessments, the assignment can be opened up to the students. The students' first task is usually to assess a selection of the example assignments. As these assessments are produced the teacher reviews them and, if satisfactory, the individual students are allowed to progress to the next stage. The teacher may ask a student to re-assess one or more of the example assessments. This should be easy to do as once an example assignment is assessed the student is able to view the teacher's "specimen" assessments. This loop is basically there to check that the weaker students are aware of the specimen assessments and have looked at them.
At the end of this initial stage the students should have a fair idea of what the assignment is about and how it is being assessed. They are now allowed to submit their own work. This is not a fixed milestone, each student will reach this second stage independently. With all the inital assessments graded the teacher can sit back and let the module run until the deadline date.
The module can be set up to allow single submission or multiple submissions. Depending on this setting, the student' first submission is either their first draft or their only attempt.When the students have submitted work they are asked to assess work from the other students. They are also shown the assessments of their own work by the other students. However, they must do at least one assessment before they are shown the peer assessments. When the assignment allows resubmission the student may, in the light of the feedback, revise their work and submit a new copy for peer assessment. The peer assessment of student submissions continues until the deadline date is reached.
The teacher now has several choices. The module allows a flexible approach to calculating the final grade for the students. In fact, the final grade can be a teacher-defined combination of:

1. The teacher's grade of the (final) submission
2. The average peer grade of the (final) submission
3. The student's grading performance

Obviously if (1) is to be included then the teacher has to assess the student submissions after the deadline. There is no real need for the students' assessments produced during the peer asessment phase to be graded by the teacher. The module can assess the quality of these assignments by internal comparison. This is probably just as well as the number of assessments generated at that phase could be quite large even for reasonably sized classes. The final phase of the module is the release of the final grades to the students.
Thus the module normally runs through four phases:

1. Set up
2. Student assessment of the example assignments, submission of work and peer assessment
3. Calculation of final grades
4. Release of final grades

And there's a single deadline occurring between phases 2 and 3.

### Variants

That describes the "standard" assignment which this module supports. The module also lends itself to a few other types of assignment. For example, a "case study" assignment can be handled where the teacher sets up a number of scenarios for the students to comment on. Here there are no student submissions the teacher simply grades the students responses to each scenario and uses those to calculate the final grades.
A second example using the module in an abbrieviated way is as a simple peer assessment assignment. Here the teacher sets up the assessment elements but does not submit any example assignments and the students go straight in to the peer assessment phase, possibly going where no class has boldly gone before!
For certain assignments the teacher may decide that the example assignments would simply lead the students into doing a cut-and-paste exercise to produce their assignments. Here the initial assessment phase would be better performed on a set of examples from a related subject rather than those directly pertaining to the particular assignment. In this way the students are shown what is expected of them and how it is being assessed but "the cat is still in the bag" so to speak. Careful monitoring of the assignment would be necessary else many students, not reading the instructions, would reproduce the examples rather then the required assignment.
The module can also be set up to ask the students to asssess their own work. That is instead of peer assessment the assignment becomes one involving self assessment. Here it is likely that the teacher would grade the (self) assessments make in the second half of phase 2 and include these grades in the final grades.

### Conclusion

Thus the module is quite flexible while still being relatively easy to set up and run. The module has been keep purposely simple. For example it does not allow the students to enter into an assessment - reply - assessment cycle during the peer assessment phase. If that sophistication is required then the Peer Graded Assignment module should be used. Other technical restrictions are that the submitted assignments are limited to a single file, that is although multiple submissions are allowed each submission can only be just one file. The files themselves are limited to a prediefined size and the module does not support links to external pieces of work.
Ray Kingdon
April 2003