Change Management for Electronic Assignment Management - Jikke Adema and Kelly Marshall at Moodlemoot AU 2014

2. Centre for Educational ICT
Jikke Adema/Kelly Marshall
Change Management for
Electronic Assignment
Management

5. Electronic Assignments?
Marked assignments
uploaded one by one
by teacher
Students uncertain
without receipt
?
No coversheet
or statement
XNo date stamp

6. Early adopters
2011: School of Nursing and Midwifery mandates
electronic submission, marking and return
Important lessons learned for Uni-wide EAM

7. Software Improvements

Submission
improvements
Student
submission
receipts
Student
declaration

 Bulk upload


9. Technology
+
Now
organisational
change
SoNM


10. Change management(Kotter 1996)
Sense of
urgency
Guiding
coalition
Vision & Strategy
Communication
Empowering
Consolidating &
Anchoring

11. October 2012:
with effect from First Semester 2014,
all student assignments generated in
electronic form should be submitted
by the student and returned to the
student electronically.

12. Why?
• Improve feedback to students
• Enhance student engagement with feedback
• Stimulates use of text matching software
• Increased convenience for students
• Increased efficiency and security
• Improved ICT skills for staff

13. Guiding coalition
Champions
Decision
makers
Leaders
Experts
Steering Group
Reference Group
Working Group

14. Empowering
The right technology
Practice run
Online materials
Support for staff
and students
Training & workshops

15. Actively engage
with problems
Communication
Shared vision:
Why?
Steering/Reference/
Working Groups
Newsletters
Website
Email

16. So, what happened?

17. Numbers
Semester 1, assignments submitted / day
Support for staff
• 811 staff members followed
workshops
• 45.000 visits to staff online
material
Support for students
• In-lecture and in-library
sessions for students
• 2.600 - 3.000 visits to
student online material
• 2.000 paper bookmarks
handed out…

18. Benefits
“There can be no dispute
about the date and time
of a submission”
“No papers were lost in this
process”

19. Communication with students
“Student complaints and
questions can be taken over
the phone and I can access
the feedback sheet, see their
grade and open their
assignment and see exactly
what they are talking about,
allowing a far more informed
conversation.”

20. Technology
“While students mainly
submitted their
assignments as Doc or
Docx there were some
other unexpected formats
submitted that I found
difficult to work with”
Restriction of file
types

21. Improvements to FLO:
• New online marking
methods: annotation &
checklists
• Easier user interface
• Resubmission
• Group assignments
• Restrict file types
• Improved online marking
methods: marking guides &
rubrics
• Better late assignment
management
• Easier download/upload
• and others….

22. eMarking
Decision
Tree

23. Benefits of eMarking
“The availability of all
assignments online
means that double
marking can be done
very readily”
“Assignments
submitted in small font
could be magnified!”
“All feedback is
legible. As legibility
has been a major
issue previously, this
is a significant gain.”

24. Audio marking
“The students love getting verbal
feedback via iAnnotate –the feedback
has been overwhelmingly positive. “
“It’s like you’re sitting there in his
office to have a meeting about your
assignment”
(1st year student)

25. Everyone happy?

26. Complaints
“Given this was my first experience of on-line
marking I encountered a number of unexpected
difficulties. Some of these appeared to relate to
my lack of familiarity with the system while
others were related to students’ lack of
familiarity with the system and others
seemed to related to the system.”

27. Complaints (!)
“eMarking allows for checks on word
count. So the academic/ marker is
sucked into an investigative process to
check on word counts more readily than
before, when it was largely casting an
eye over the paper”
“Where there was one option in the
past, e-marking offers numerous
possibilities”
“it is not easy to replicate the red pen
on the physical page. Perhaps this is
implicit in this type of marking, and
one must accept it.”
“The process of handing back (…)
shifts work to the marker. This is
because we need to re-upload all
the grades to FLO. This requires
internet, or being at work”

28. Benefits for all?
“Electronic marking has been adopted
citing many key improvements. I agree,
there are many: ease of submission, less
carrying of paper, admin work for
professional staff, easier for students to
submit essays without travel to hand in,
etc. While these are generally good things,
it must be remembered that these are
benefits primarily for professional staff
and students, NOT academic staff. This
involves significant cost-shifting of work to
the marker.”
JISC report:
Research suggests
that students and
administrative staff are
quick to see the
benefits of
EMA whereas
academic staff have
more mixed views and
may be more likely to
resist changes to
working practices.

29. OH&S concerns
“My RSI symptoms
have decreased as I sit
up straight in front of
my screen, rather than
hunching over papers
for hours. “
“Emarking (…) requires very
repetitive typing commands and
mouse clicking, compounding
RSI and overuse injuries (esp
eyestrain and wrist strain).”
“One of our most experienced
markers now has a shoulder
injury which has never
happened marking on paper”
VS

30. Time investment
“marking takes longer”
VS
“It was not as difficult as I thought it would be. Once I got the hang of it,
I was marking faster.”
“I just wanted to say how much I prefer marking assignments
electronically. It took time for me to develop best strategies for myself
and put aside my own pedantry about how I wanted to give feedback,
but I now find it a much more efficient way to mark and hate it when I
get a thesis or major project to mark and it isn't sent as a pdf.”

31. “I thought I’d never like electronic marking. Just some
new-fangled IT thing I’d have to learn. How could it
replace the tactile pleasure of carting around “the pile” of
hardcopy assignments? The academic joy of interfacing
with students through my almost legible insights and
comments? I have been proven wrong. I really do enjoy it.
Downloading submissions and uploading the marked
papers turns out to be easy. I’m giving students more
feedback. “

32. Next:


Submission
Return

33. references
References
• JISC Electronic Management of Assessment. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/electronic-assessment-management
• Kotter, John P., Leading Change. Boston 1996
Images:
• Research higher degree thesis - http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/current-students/images/bookcorner.jpg
• RHD graduation hat - http://edcabellon.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/11155.jpg
• Extension please - http://cfcdn.ivoryresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/exension2.jpg
• Frustrated student: http://www.galleonnews.com/2012/10/students-plagued-by-computer-failures/
• Frustrated teacher: http://fionaevemurray.wordpress.com/responses/response-1/
• Innovation adoption curve: http://www.kentlai.com/writings/roger-adoption-curve
• Guiding coalition: http://blog.uvm.edu/capacity/2013/06/07/looking-at-organizational-change/
• Act now: http://hoganvisions.com/2012/11/08/urgency/
• Empowering: http://talentalley.com/2012/03/13/empoweringemployee/
• Change: http://www.ukperform.com/html/organisational_change.html
• Strategy: http://www.socialnetpromo.com/2012/06/13/services-description/strategy/
• Date stamp http://www.gavpugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/datestamp1.jpg
• Baby computer http://www.nadielabs.net/early-adopters-5-claves-para-detectar-a-tus-primeros-clientes/
• Communication http://centraliamomuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/meeting.jpg
• Try it now http://www.sitecues.com/wp-content/themes/twentytweleve/_ui/img/sitecues.com.try.it.now.jpg