Assessment Feedback and Course Design

This #Take5 blog is written by Katrin Bain, a senior lecturer in social work at London Metropolitan University who shares insights from a literature review and teaching practice of how assessments can be inclusive and meaningful to students to ensure deep learning, student success and satisfaction. While the examples are from the social work courses, the insights are transferable to other subject areas. Introduction A few years ago, I asked myself the questions: ‘What makes higher education assessments inclusive?’ and ‘How to design inclusive assessments in higher education?’ I conducted a literature review and analysed 14 articles. The full review […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Dr Hemakshi Chokshi of London Metropolitan University. Hemakshi runs the sort of course that makes you all want to study Business – with the sort of assessment that makes you realise that assessment as and for learning can be a reality. The one Hemakshi describes here not only drives authentic engagement and learning – but creates celebratory events that allow students to bond, to develop lifelong friendships and relationships – and to really shine. At the end of reading this we hope that you are inspired to revisit your own practice in this […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Robin Sulkosky and explores labour-based grading. Robin has been teaching language- and writing-related subjects for over a decade, and currently teaches in the First-Year Writing Program at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Robin’s pedagogical interests have focused sharply on the power of instructional design to improve learning across diverse instructional contexts. This post features two alternative grading systems to start conversation in the broader teaching community about where traditional systems might fail students.  Given that Learning Development is not about ‘fixing’ the student – but could well be about ways of ‘fixing the […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from  David Tree. David has been obsessed with assessment strategies since 2011 when he redesigned the FHEQ Level 5 assessments on the Biomedical Sciences BSc at Brunel. David used the Integrated Programme Assessment (IPA) approach, taking care to make sure all assignments explicitly linked to the assessments in the previous and subsequent years. Back then he didn’t know there was pedagogy and fancy terms for this, he just thought all programmes of study did this! In 2016 the team David co-led won an Advance HE Collaborative Award in Teaching Excellence (CATE) for IPA and […]

Studies show nursing students experience significant maths anxiety (MA) (Bull 2009; McMullan, Jones and Lea 2012); this is the ‘fear or an adverse emotional response to the idea of doing mathematics’ (Hart and Ganley 2019, p. 122). As MA is correlated with lower maths performance in nurses (Bull 2009), Dr Katie Woodhouse-Skinner (Academic Skills and Statistics Tutor) and Hannah Glenn (Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing), wanted to know whether they, as university healthcare academics and library academic support working at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), could work together to reduce MA in the healthcare curriculum, using alternative pedagogies to develop students’ […]

This post is brought to you from two learning developers, Ralitsa Kantcheva (University of Bangor) and Ian Johnson (University of Portsmouth). It seeks to develop arguments about the future of LD and the questionable value of grades in higher education today. It proposes that rather than grading, attaching value to the student’s ability to contribute to their local and global communities could offer a promising alternative. A decade from now – What does the future of learning development hold? A recent Take5 blog post by the Bournemouth University Learning Development (LD) team (Bickle et al., 2023) drew together how various LD […]

Bringing development opportunities to the masses  This #Take5 post is brought to you from Dr Lee Fallin a regular tweeter and learning developer based at the University of Hull. Lee loves all things digital, and uses this #Take5 post to reflect on his journey from MOOC consumer to MOOC producer. I first learned about Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) at the 2013 ALDinHE Conference hosted at the University of Plymouth. This was *just* as MOOCs were emerging as a popular means of accessing learning online. MOOCs are designed to support unlimited participation and open access by delivering learning through online […]

This #Take5 blog post is brought to you from Gilly Salmon – and we are so delighted to be able to present her latest thoughts on the 5-stage model for online learning. If not now – when? The 5-stage model: Carpe Diem The 5-stage model for online learning was first built nearly 30 years ago from grounded and action research. (Sure, cue violins!).  It was rooted in social constructivism, learner engagement and scaffolding  when content was still king. Initially, I deployed it to support tutor development – the term I called ‘e-moderating’.  Fast forward through three editions of the book, another on […]

On your marks, get set, sprint This Blog post for Take5, (edited by Sandra Sinfield) is on Nottingham Trent University’s (NTU) design sprints – in particular on how educational developers support the disciplines’ design teams in working on emergent course (programme) design. It has been kindly written by Ellie Kennedy, NTU. NTU design sprints: making course design more developmental Design sprints at NTU take a supportive, developmental approach to course (programme) design. Whereas course design was often previously “hidden” work done by the course team outside core hours, the sprint model – developed and organised by the Centre for Academic Development […]

This #Take5 post is brought to you from Dr Carina Buckley of Solent University – and is in dialogue with her #Take5 on students and camera use in online teaching and learning from a few weeks ago. The Evil DrB herself Should your students turn their cameras on? A rebuttal A few weeks ago, I argued in this blog that students should be free to choose whether or not to turn their cameras on during live online sessions, and that there were other ways for students to participate. While I still support this approach, particularly from a student-centred, theoretical point […]