Customisable Online Academic Skills Self-Assessment:

Development and Initial Feedback

Steve Briggs

Nick Collis

Nigel Upton

Session Overview

• Rationale for developing the resource

• Demonstration of the resource

– Tutor perspective– Student perspective– Running reports

• Feedback

• Next steps

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Rationale• Historically, the Professional and Academic Development

(PAD) Team have provided a self-assessment booklet for students commencing undergraduate study.

• The booklet focused on key academic skills including:

– Writing– ICT– Maths– Time management and organisation

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Rationale II

• By working through the booklet, students assessed how confident they felt about different aspects of studying

• Students also completed exercises to provide an insight into their performance related to basic academic skills

• If students identified areas where they lacked confidence / competence they were encouraged to access online resources / services provided by PAD

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Benefits of the Booklet

• Encouraged independent learning

• Introduction to PDP

• Source of service promotion

• Could be a scheduled induction exercise

• However, whilst we found the concept of the booklet to be sound we experienced problems associated with the paper format

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Issues with the Paper Format• Cost

• Non-subject specific

• Distribution time

• Fixed content once printed

• Catering for last minute requests from academics

• Relevance of content to certain courses (e.g. Maths)

• Self-assessment meant that trends were not identified amongst student groups

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An Online Solution

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• Given the issues associated with a paper self-assessment resource we considered whether a technology based solution could be applied

• After conversation with our Learning Technology team it was decided that an online version of the self-assessment (delivered through Blackboard and built using learning units) would be developed

• This would address many of the problems that had previously been encountered

• It would also enable trends to be identified in academic skill development needs

Demonstration

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Early Adopters

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• Academics who approached PAD requesting copies of our self-assessment booklet were sent a copy of the online self-assessment package

• We promoted awareness of the package through arranging departmental demonstrations

• Details of the package were included in University induction guidelines – as an option that could be used

Initial Dissemination

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• We were concerned that PAD / Learning Technology could be inundated with ICT requests related to the self-assessment package

• We therefore made it clear that ownership and responsibility for revising content sat with academic teams

• PAD would provide limited assistance with content when requested

• Learning Technology would provide assistance around installation / running of reports

Outcomes – Learning Development Team

• As anticipated:

– Dissemination of the resource to academics has become much more straightforward – forward instructions email with attached zip file

– Typos have been easily corrected when identified

– Significant cost saving

– Requests have easily been catered for

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Outcomes - Academics

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“The package itself is great - but as usual it [problems] is to do with implementation”

(Senior Lecturer – Faculty of Business)

Issues that emerged

• Lead time needed to implement

• Staff having the time to customise content

• Course team engagement / championing within faculty

• Integration with other systems (such as PebblePad)

• Student completion not made compulsory

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Moving Forward• Increase the range of template questions to make the resource more

resistant to non-customised use by academics. This will be done by requesting input from Librarians / Computer Skills Training / Language Centre)

• The Centre for Learning Excellence will include details of the package in induction guidance that academic departments should follow

• We plan to work closely with early adopters who in turn we hope will become our ‘champions’

• The package will be as a source of evidence for justifying a request for on course academic skills teaching delivered by learning resources teams

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Questions

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