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-<h2> Another Assignment Module</h2>
-<br />
-<div style="margin-left: 40px;"> "Assessment is the most powerful lever
-teachers have to influence the way students respond to courses and
-behave as learners"<br />
-</div>
-<br />
-<div style="text-align: right; margin-left: 80px;"><small> 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</small><br />
-</div>
-<br />
-<h3>Overview</h3>
-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:<br />
-<ol>
- <li><b>No grading:</b> 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. </li>
- <li><b>Accumulative grading:</b> 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.</li>
- <li><b>Error Banded Grading:</b> 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.</li>
- <li><b>Criteria Grading:</b> 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. </li>
-</ol>
-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.<br />
-<br />
-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.<br />
-<br />
-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.<br />
-<br />
-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.<br />
-<br />
-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.<br />
-<br />
-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:<br />
-<ol>
- <li>The teacher's grade of the (final) submission</li>
- <li>The average peer grade of the (final) submission</li>
- <li>The student's grading performance</li>
-</ol>
-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.<br />
-<br />
-Thus the module normally runs through four phases:<br />
-<ol>
- <li>Set up</li>
- <li>Student assessment of the example assignments, submission of work
-and peer assessment</li>
- <li>Calculation of final grades</li>
- <li>Release of final grades</li>
-</ol>
-And there's a single deadline occurring between phases 2 and 3.<br />
-<br />
-<h3>Variants</h3>
-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.<br />
-<br />
-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!<br />
-<br />
-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.<br />
-<br />
-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.<br />
-<br />
-<h3>Conclusion</h3>
-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.<br />
- <br />
-Ray Kingdon <br />
-April 2003<br />
-<br />
-</body>
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