eMarking Assistant podcast: Recent Episodes
Peter Evans
In this interview Dr Kym Simoncini talks about how she and her tutors or markers use Automated Rubrics and eMarking Assistant.
Dr. Kym Simoncini is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood and Primary Education at the University of Canberra. Prior to her academic career, Kym was a primary school teacher in North Queensland and England. Her research focuses on children’s learning and play. Kym’s current research is investigating playgrounds and family learning in Papua New Guinea and exploring young children’s STEM learning and how parents and educators and foster early STEM learning in Australia.
00:00 Peter: Introducing Dr Kym Simoncini from the Faculty of Education, Science, Technology and Mathematics at the University of Canberra.
00:20: Kym: Describes her role at the University of Canberra.
01:10 Kym: Describe how she graded papers before using Automated Rubrics i.e. printout the rubric, then circle the performance descriptors, enter the numeric mark, and then add up the totals.
01:40 Peter: Pressing F6 will highlight the performance level and calculate the weighted mark for that criteria. Pressing F5 will vary the mark down and F7 will vary it up. Pressing F8 will total the marks and convert it to a grade. You can see a demo at http://eMarkingAssistant.com/products/rubric-o-matic
01:50: Kym: Use of the electronic rubric when working with tutors/markers in moderation to ensure consistent grading.
3:50: Kym: Use of F5 and F7 to vary assessment in moderation meetings and then pressing F8 to retotall the marks.
5:00 Kym: Preparing a comment bank and then distributing the comment bank to tutors
6:15 Kym: Feedback from tutors and markers. "Overwhelmingly positive responses from markers about using eRubric. Just because it does make it so simple. Using the F6 button to fill in those criteria boxes. Its so easy... and then having the potential to have pluses and minuses and then F8 which is the total. It just makes it so much quicker than the old way... its automated. I couldn't go back.There is no way I could go back!"
6:50: Kym: "I would definitely recommend it for others.... They were tearing their hair out with the old use of rubrics. .. I gave a quick tutorial to them all and they were so happy and grateful because it just saved them so much time and it was so much easier and now they are all using it."
8:00 Kym: "Thank goodness you invented it ... Marking some times can be a chore but with this tool ... you can just focus on giving feedback rather than the actual mechanics of adding things up. So I am super grateful for eMarking Assistant."
8:30 End
The post 003: Dr Kym Simoncini from the University of Canberra appeared first on eMarking Assistant.
Below is a summary of our conversation. Feel free to add comments at the end of the full post.
00:20 Peter: Introducing Sasha Butterworth from the University of Canberra College
00:30: Sasha: Describes the role of the University of Canberra College in providing a pathway for international and domestic students to enroll in diploma level programs and then transfer to degree programs at the University of Canberra. UCC provides a scaffolded approach in the discipline units with the addition of units in academic English.
01:30 Peter: Can you tell me about your process for marking assignments and providing feedback before you started using eMarking Assistant?
01:50: Sasha: While we have used Moodle for a number of years, the process used by individual teachers has been quite varied e.g. some ask students to submit on paper and/ or mark paper assignments.
02:55: Peter: Can you tell me how things are going now?
03:00: Sasha: Using eMarking Assistant we have flexibility and the opportunity to learn about how to better provide feedback to students. Depending on the assessment item we can select the way of providing feedback e.g. use of reusable comments and/or the eRubrics. Students and staff see tailored comments as more meaningful to their assignments and the assessment criteria.
04:25: Sasha: While grammar comments are fairly standard, it is easier for the assessor to have their own "voice" in the comments they provide.
05:25: Peter: using a common comment to deal with frequently occurring issues actually releases more time to make personalised comments when needed
05:50: Sasha: We are no longer are we trying to cover the assignment in corrections but rather provide students with guidance on how to improve their assignments.
06:25: Sasha: On the value of being able to highlight a word or phrase throughout the assignment.
07:10: Sasha: Adding personalised comments is "creating an interest in marking that has not been there before ... staff are actually saying ... that they are finding it enjoyable"!
07:30: Sasha: "Students enjoy being able to actually read the teacher's comments ... students are interested in addressing the comments and that provides a great learning environment because the comments are available online in Moodle ... and we then take it one step further in the computer lab ... the comments can be discussed and addressed ... the time spent in that computer lab is now far more constructive ... used to be quite an arduous task. However, students are now interested in asking you about how the comment can be applied directly to their assignment ... rather than 'Can you fix my grammar'... (they) are actually reading the comments and taking them on board."
09:05 Peter: so the feedback on the assignment is feeding forward into better learning
09:20 Peter: value of having the feedback accessible in Moodle
09:25 Sasha: it used to be frustrating with students not picking up paper based feedback or not bringing the feedback to class. Online feedback is accessible to students and staff and is available for moderation and to better support transparency in the assessment process.
10:20 Sasha: students are more open to conversations about feedback
10:30: Peter: Typed feedback has more of a voice of authority and if students are seeing similar comments they have more confidence in the assessment proccess
10:55: Sasha: Students see the feedback as more "proper ... they value the process and they feel that it is more authoritative and more thorough"
11:50: Sasha: Talked about the time needed to become confident and efficient in the emarking. "eMarking is not an insurmountable challenge ... we get used to operating with a certain method ... the time needed to get used to eMarking is really only one batch of assignments."
13:35: Both: Thanks
13:40 Peter: a 2 minute video on eMarking Ass...
Welcome to the first edition of the eMarking Assistant podcast where we talk to teachers and lecturers about how they electronically grade papers and mark assignments.
My name is Peter Evans and in this episode I'll tell you a little about why I created the eMarking Assistant add-in for Microsoft Word. You can see a two minute video of eMarking Assistant at http://eMarkingAssistant.com/emarking
But before I tell you my story, I would be very interested in knowing a little about what you want in an electronic marking system? What would help you provide useful feedback to students? What would help reduce your workload? What barriers do you face and what would help you to overcome these?
Feel free to go to http://eMarkingAssistant.com/podcast001 and leave a comment or send me an email at peter.evans@emarkingassistant.com. Your comments will help ensure that this podcast series meets your needs.
I've been teaching online since last century and in 2006 I had a particularly heavy workload with over 600 first year students in an introductory communication course with 5 small written assignments, a presentation and a 2000 word essay. I had a limited amount of time to do the required grading and marking.
Like most teachers in this position I started experimenting with different ways to provide quality, consistent feedback on assessment and keep my workload to a manageable level. I used a variety of systems including macros that inserted full comments when a code it typed, Word comments, tracked changes and autotext, Excel based rubrics and even some web based grading systems. Over several semesters created and refined the eMarking Assistant add-in for Word.
The current version of eMarking Assistant allows you to:
create and use of detailed reusable comments that can be picked from a floating toolbar
create and use automated rubrics which rescale, total and convert the mark to a percentage and grade and
use some other grading tools e.g. highlight a misused or overused word or phrase throughout the assignment or google a phrase from within Word.
I quickly realised that other teachers wanted such tools and students appreciated the more detailed, timely and consistent feedback that I could provide.
In this series of podcasts I will interview teachers and professors on the ways they provide feedback to students and grade electronic assessment. While we will focus on the use of the eMarking Assistant software, we will also look at other systems. We will also look at all phases of the assessment process from setting the assignment, grading it, returning the graded assessment and recording marks. We'll also look at managing and moderating marking if you are lucky enough to have a team of teaching assistants or tutors.
Each podcast episode will be relatively short, perhaps 10 to 15 minutes, and be supported by show notes and links and a place for comments and feedback in the podcast section of the eMarkingAssistant.com site.
Feel free to visit the eMarkingAssistant.com site where you can:
view the demonstration videos,
download a 30 day trial of eMarking Assistant for Windows only
download the free version of the eRubric Assistant which runs on Mac or Windows
join the conversation around better ways of electronically grading papers and mark assignments.
If you find eMarking Assistant saves you time you can buy an individual or site license or arrange a 6 month trail for your school, university or organisation.
I wish you every success in your teaching.
The post 001: Welcome and introduction appeared first on eMarking Assistant.