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This week in Did You Know?: Developing online feedback systems

Tabula screenshotIn this week’s ‘Did You Know’ feature, we look at how the University is developing new on-line systems to support students submitting work and receiving feedback.

Timely, quality feedback

A key area highlighted in student feedback is the need for timely, quality feedback on assessed work and a better managed system for the distribution of this feedback.

Tabula coursework management system

In response to this, IT Services has released a new online feedback system to help departments.

The system proved very easy to use, and has proved to be exceptionally effective… By 4pm, 122 students had retrieved their feedback. This indicates 97% delivery within one working day.” – Professor Roger Leng, Law School

In addition to the department-specific tools such as Moodle and My.WBS, ITS has developed Tabula - a universal coursework management system available to all departments. Since its development in 2012, coursework management within Tabula is now being used in over 29 academic departments. This system is constantly being developed and improved to simplify existing features and incorporate new ones to make it as useful as possible for students and staff.

Having everything online makes submitting coursework and getting feedback so much easier. You can track everything online and you get an email when your mark and feedback is ready so you don’t have to go into campus and rifle through piles of printed feedback.”

From last academic year, Tabula is now integrated with an improved e-submission system to increase efficiency in plagiarism detection and the e-feedback and e-marking features. Marks and feedback for each assignment submitted through the system is archived to support students and personal tutors in monitoring progress.

Online feedback gives a much-needed answer to the issue of the quality and consistency of feedback. It makes sense for everything to be done electronically because it’s easy to lose paper feedback.”

Moodle graphicMoodle Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)

Since being introduced at Warwick in 2012, Moodle has been used by over a dozen departments to build an interactive learning space for undergraduate modules, bringing together learning resources and activities in one space. In many departments Moodle is used for the electronic submission of assessment and quizzes, supporting the development of high quality, timely feedback for students. Moodle has also enabled departments to provide interactive activities such as quizzes, forums and workshop tools to complement existing classroom and lecture based activities, and helps students to interact with teaching staff online.

Moodle makes it really easy to access all the information and resources we need, including assessments and feedback. In some modules, using forums and other interactive tools make it possible to engage with lecturers and other students online."

Feedback has helped us improve the design of the Warwick Moodle to make it easier to find information about modules, enhance existing features and introduce new functionality, such as integration with the new lecture capture system. Changes which make it easier for students to access prompt feedback. We are currently working to improve Moodle even further by incorporating library reading lists and lecture recordings, which has been piloted in some departments already.

Moodle has allowed us to manage 15 different assessed activities within our tutorial programme. Thanks to Moodle we have been able to return feedback on all these assessments within two weeks of submission" - Professor John McCarthy, School of Life Sciences

Did you also know…?

  • In the October 2012 Warwick Student Community Statement , we gave our commitment to providing relevant and meaningful feedback within four weeks (20 working days).
  • In order to highlight examples of good practice in assessment and feedback throughout the University, we held the ‘Fabulous Feedback ’ competition based on student nominations.
  • Hear the winners of the 2013 Fab Feedback competition, Sean Hand (French Studies) , Richard Lampard (Sociology) and Ian Tuersley (WMG) talk about their views on feedback in this podcast.
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