{"id":5032,"date":"2016-10-26T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.edgehill.ac.uk\/learningedge\/?p=5032"},"modified":"2017-12-11T14:48:09","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T14:48:09","slug":"technology-supported-learning-advanced-grade-marking-and-grade-centre-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edgehill.ac.uk\/learningedge\/2016\/10\/26\/technology-supported-learning-advanced-grade-marking-and-grade-centre-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology Supported Learning – Advanced Grade Marking and Grade Centre use"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clinical Education, now housed within the Faculty of Health and Social Care, re-won a tender in March 2015 to deliver the Postgraduate Certificate in Workplace-Based Postgraduate Medical Education from September 2015.\u00a0 With this came an overhaul of the way that the marking and grades were managed within Learning Edge and as a result a more streamlined, transparent and efficient way of working has been adopted.<\/p>\n

Electronic marking had been used for some time but results were calculated on a feedback sheet and manually emailed back to the student.\u00a0 This was excessive work that had the potential for\u00a0error for the bank of Associate Tutors (ATs) that taught and marked on the course.<\/p>\n

As of September 2016 Turnitin was used as the primary platform for submission and included formative and summative use of the tool \u2013 formative for students to check their originality report and summative for the staff marking the work.<\/p>\n

\"GradeCentre\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Intelligent use of the Grade Centre also\u00a0followed.\u00a0 Here is a summary of the tools and functions that were integrated into the process:<\/p>\n

Smart Views;<\/strong><\/p>\n

Enables filtering of the Grade Centre so that each tutor only has to display their own students.\u00a0 In the module, each tutor has approximately 15 students within a group and it is the ATs role to manage, track and mark these students.\u00a0 The groups are called Learning Sets (LS) and there may be as many as 12 LS in a cohort!\u00a0 Being able to filter this list of 180+ students is highly\u00a0beneficial.<\/p>\n

Creating Columns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Extra columns are created to track the completion of \u2018Compulsory Discussion Activities\u2019.\u00a0 It\u2019s a requirement that all students on the module complete 75-80% of the discussions to complete the course.\u00a0 By putting a mark (usually a \u2018Y\u2019) in the cell for that student in the Grade Centre, a quick glance is all it takes to see which students aren\u2019t engaging and who might need a \u2018nudge\u2019.\u00a0 A column is also created for the students\u2019 Learning Set number so that when viewing the Full Grade Centre you can see who may not have been allocated to their Learning Set Group \u2013 especially helpful as sometimes students can be quite late to enrol and may miss being placed in a Group.<\/p>\n

Deleting the Total Column<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u2018Total Column\u2019 is a default creation and Clinical Education doesn\u2019t use it \u2013 so it has to go!\u00a0 The Total Column can be removed once the \u2018External Grade\u2019 function is moved elsewhere \u2013 we move it to the \u2018Weighted Total\u2019:<\/p>\n

Weighted Totals<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Weighted Total is thus made the External Grade.\u00a0 The Weighted Total is set up so that the 2 assignments that students are required to submit are given a weighting coordinated with the Module Handbook (for example 50%-50% or 70%-30% etc).\u00a0 This helps with calculating an overall grade average \u2013 especially if one assignment is good and the other not so good.\u00a0 The only issue here is that if one assignment fails then the Weighted Total may still record a pass overall as the \u2018other\u2019 grade might pull the calculation up.\u00a0 This involves checking that both assignments are at least a pass before assuming that the student has passed overall.<\/p>\n

Grading Schemas<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Clinical Education we make use of the \u2018Primary\u2019 and \u2018Secondary\u2019 displays for results.\u00a0 The Primary is the figure given to the assignment (out of 100%) the Secondary display converts this into a Postgraduate scale that will identify \u2018Distinction\u2019, \u2018Merit\u2019, \u2018Pass\u2019 and \u2018Fail\u2019.\u00a0 The Grading Schema works this out across the columns its applied to in the Grade Centre.<\/p>\n

Grading Colours<\/strong><\/p>\n

This makes quick glances easy! Colour coding the cells in the Grade Centre helps identify where there is a submission requiring marking, and where students have achieved a Distinction, Merit, Pass or Fail.\u00a0 In conjunction with the Smart Views, tutors marking can be tracked easily by the Module Leader.\u00a0 It can also produce a nice overview of what the students are achieving.<\/p>\n

Tidying up<\/strong><\/p>\n

Finally, a bit of tidying up.\u00a0 As the Grade Centre is quite busy then any unnecessary columns may as well be removed.\u00a0 The only column that we remove is the ‘User ID’ which is in fact a duplicate of the Student ID although the \u2018Availability\u2019 and \u2018Child Course\u2019 columns could also be reasonably removed.<\/p>\n

GradeMark <\/strong>in Turnitin<\/strong> has also helped streamline the marking process. \u00a0Using quick comments, general comments and particularly utilising Turnitin Rubrics<\/strong> tutors have found an ideal way to create and leave feedback for their students.\u00a0 Using the Smart Views in the Grade Centre helps tutors to focus just on their own Learning Set of students.<\/p>\n

So as can be seen a number of mechanisms can be used (you don\u2019t have to use all of them by-the-way!) to help with the management of a module or course.<\/p>\n

Learning Technology Development have created a number of e-packages and guides to help you incorporate the above tools into your own courses:<\/p>\n