Providing computer-assisted, two-way feedback in formative assessment: an innovation supporting best educational practice

Abstract

This thesis presents the design and development of an educational ICT innovation called the Quality Assessment System (QAS), intended to: increase the speed of providing useful, legible and consistent feedback, enhance student engagement in the analysis and improvement of their own work, and provide an easily-accessible, cumulative history of completed tasks and feedback.

The QAS has been developed to a proof-of-concept stage as a Microsoft Word add-in, which can be used on digital or handwritten work, and has functions to administer resubmissions. The prototype system was evaluated at a tertiary institution in the field of English for Speakers of Other Languages. I used observations, interview methods, and a Wizard-of-Oz experiment to simulate full use of the software. The research found that: - the QAS could foster the rapid provision of consistent, clear feedback; - the facility to provide digital feedback on handwritten work safeguarded the desire of some students to continue writing their tasks by hand; - the handling of resubmitted tasks and the comparison of feedback on the first and second submissions (or any other pair of user-selected tasks) was considered very useful; - some students were emotional attached to handwritten feedback and believed that feedback mediated by computer showed a lack of teacher care for the students; - administrators believed the QAS would be useful for resolving student-teacher disputes, and as a tool to enhance the robustness of the quality self-assessment system the faculty adhered to. While I acknowledge the need for caution in interpreting the fieldwork results of small samples, this research places systemisation tools such as the QAS firmly on the agenda for closer investigation.