Improved Pedagogy Enabled by Assessment Using Gradescope

Gradescope is a Turnitin solution that enables quick and easy grading.

This useful tool saves instructors time and lets them focus on teaching, which is the most important part of the learning process.

It is undisputed that feedback is very crucial where learning is concerned. This is to help students know how they are doing, which areas to focus on, and so on. It also helps instructors know how they can help their students improve, which concepts to revisit and also to help them better understand those concepts. While Turnitin’s main focus is to empower students to do their best, authentic work, their team identified the importance of providing a tool to help deliver effective feedback, while saving instructors grading time.

Gradescope has solved grading problems for many institutions, big or small. One such example is of a large institution that had to find a system to suit thousands of students.  The institution needed a solution that would create consistency all round – for every module, teaching has to be the same for every student, and the experience has to be as similar as possible. However, with more than 30 000 students, grading each student’s paper was not that easy. The initial method that the university used was grading exams based on the rubric developed by a team and then they had to trust and hope that instructors would all interpret and apply the rubric in the way it was intended (and in the same way). With each instructor drawing their own conclusion from what they were noticing while marking the papers, it was difficult to know how all the students were performing as a whole.

Gradescope changed all this. The university’s grading problems were solved! It enabled data-informed instruction and consistent grading. Instructors could now gain insight into how all the students answered certain questions. Gradescope provided the university with unique and clear information for every question regardless of type, from multiple-choice to open-response questions. In response, instructors had the opportunity to adjust instruction, review test questions, and easily compare the similarity between versions of exams.

Instructors could identify the variance of different answers students gave, as well as group answers together. This allows instructors to provide a standard comment with just one click, for every common response. This saves instructors time, and gives them a chance to focus on instruction based on the data and insights they would get from the test or assessment results. Insight into graded results data, standard feedback to students, students receiving feedback faster due to streamlined grading process, and instructors saving a tremendous amount of time – all these factors help instructors and align coursework with pedagogical goals at the institution.

How Does Gradescope Work?

Here is how the rubric based digital grading tool works in assessing exams:

1. It grades student submissions online, in any location
2. Gradescope changes the point value associated with a particular mistake once and applies to the entire population
3. Gradescope references similar mistakes so that the grader does not have to rewrite the same comment
4. It facilitates a database that keeps a digital record of the student work
5. It allows feedback digitally outside of classroom time

These activities help Gradescope to focus on four principles of effective feedback:

Gradescope

Institutions that use Gradescope have found that teaching and learning outcomes improve with the insights gained from using Gradescope, supporting them in meeting their pedagogical commitment.

United Kingdom, 2022– MEA Markets magazine has announced the winners of the 2021 MEA Business Awards

We are honoured to share the news that Eiffel Corp has been recognised as the eLearning Innovators of the Year – Africa (for 2021).

Running consecutively in its fifth year, the MEA Business Awards programme acknowledges and celebrates diversely talented businesses based in the Middle East and Africa. In 2021, the focus has been on recovery and moving forward after a turbulent first year of the pandemic. The aim of the MEA Business Awards is to award those businesses and professional individuals who have shown resilience and demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit by taking their business to a new level of success.

Our Awards Coordinator, Victoria Cotton, has expressed her joy over hosting the awards programme this year: “I am delighted to have been associated with the Awards programme this year and would like to offer my biggest congratulations to all the winners this year. I am very proud of all the businesses associated with MEA Markets this year and would like to wish them all the best for their future endeavours!”

To find out more about these prestigious awards, and the dedicated professionals selected for them, please visit https://www.mea-markets.com/awards/mea-business-awards/ where you can view our winners supplement and full winners list.

Higher Education has seen many changes due to Covid-19. The needs and demands of students are rapidly changing along with the development of educational technology. These are the trends to look out for in terms of student needs when it comes to the future of higher education institutions.

Student Career Pathways are Top of Mind

Students place a high value on how their institution is preparing them for a career post-graduation. Data highlights that career concerns start before students attend a college/university. To remain relevant, institutions must focus on attracting more students and increasing alumni connections with a focus on career pathways, as well as strong links to professional bodies and workplace organizations that promote quality and high standards in their membership

This then also raises the issue that with so many more choices, pathways, industry qualifications, and the expense of a university education how do colleges, etc. make their offerings attractive? Universities must demonstrate the value they bring to the table to remain relevant.

Flexible Learning Options

Covid-19 has highlighted the possibility of remote or online learning, where students do not have to be on campus daily. Flexible course options are a top consideration for prospective students and have to be taken into account going forward.

Learner and Institution Success Require Innovation

The adoption of new models and student-centric innovation requires the use of an agile platform to empower faculty and staff throughout the entire learner journey. The sudden shutdown proved the long-term worth of digital strategies in areas like virtual campus tours, digital advertising, virtual advising, and hybrid courses.

Keep in mind that university innovation and Edtech innovation don’t have to be at odds with each other. At the same time, the needs of students should always trump the needs of technology and innovation. It is a fine balance.

Information Dissemination vs Cerebral Personal Transformation

Information is available freely on the internet. That is why it has become extremely important to deliver educational experiences. Approaches to teaching and learning need to be focused on expanding knowledge application and personal development, rather than retaining information.

Intentional and Relevant Learning Content

Quality and relevance of content become increasingly relevant. Institutions can no longer rely on prescribed textbooks and articles only. They need to generate their own content and adapt learning to be more personalised. Technology and the available data play a big role in teaching and learning from an adaptive and/or personalised approach.

Growth in the Importance of Advanced Technologies in Learning

The introduction of advanced technologies including VR, cloud-based LMS, and AI will drive the market growth. In short, AI is coming, don’t say you weren’t warned!

Gaming and gamification have already become part of new, innovative teaching and learning methods, and will no doubt become increasingly part of the learning experience in the future – engaging learners in their world.

Datafication, Privacy and Student activism

With the growth of the use of technology in education and the development of remote or distance learning monitoring (such as proctoring tools for assessments), the issue of privacy is growing. Data security and student information are contentious issues, and while we use data to improve learning experiences, students are becoming more actively concerned with privacy matters, which means we are seeing an uprise in student activism in response.

The Shift to Online Learning 

Technology-based learning and digital teaching are increasingly part of every individual’s learning experience. This has become even more relevant over the past two years. Evolving from school level to university level, this mode of teaching and learning is even becoming relevant at the work level too.  

This means that while educators have needed to adapt to the changes that technology brings to education, COVID-19 caused a Tsunami of change, with everyone needing to adjust even faster. The scope of the changes has also grown seeing that for digital technology and education to work, it must be used effectively and incorporated in the right way. If not, the whole exercise is futile. 

We recently had an interesting conversation on the topic of digital teaching and learning with Anne-Mart Olsen from Nelson Mandela University. A group of staff members participated in our Digital Teaching eXpert Course (DTX), and we reflected on the course and the abovementioned issues surrounding Covid-19 and the shift to digital teaching. 

The Need for Professional Development 

Anne-Mart Olsen is the Academic Developer at Nelson Mandela University (NMU). Her focus is generally curriculum design and learning design. Her role also entails the induction of newly appointed academics at NMU. The juggle between work and being a homeschooling mom, was possibly the worst experience ever. In the same breath, it was through trying to homeschool a Grade One who is still learning to read, that helped Anne-Mart learn patience and develop her skills further in digital learning.  

After completing the DTX course, Anne-Mart reflected with us on her experience. “It’s kind of hard to admit…but I realised that I had quite a big gap in my own digital teaching skills. I mean, I used to do adoption of technology but that was back in the day when web 2.0 was still the thing….” 

“I realised that in my case, I had to help academics get online, I have to support students if they’re struggling, and I have my kids who I have to help.” In other words, the DTX course had a multi-purpose in Anne-Mart’s case.  Anne-Mart received numerous queries that she did not know how to respond to, and had to research or figure out first before she could get back to the student or lecturer. With lockdown, they suddenly faced new challenges. “We were thrown into Zoom, we were thrown into Teams. We’ve always had Moodle, but Moodle was often used as a repository even by ourselves when we were creating our own Moodle sites. We were assisting academics to conceptualise their curriculum and, in a way, developing it with learning design, and we have a learning design team.”  

Anne-Mart’s role is to bridge the two – to bring learning design and the curriculum together. Anne-Mart explains, “I reached the point where I realised there was such a big gap between what we say we want to do… and what is actually realistic or implementable. We needed to upskill. I had no idea what to expect, but I was hoping that I could develop myself quickly, both personally and professionally, while attending an online course. While I’ve done MOOCs before, MOOCS are, as you know quite vicious, if you drop in your drop out. This was different – I wanted an online experience. I needed to understand how to transition materials from face-to-face teaching to online teaching.” 

Expectations of the Course 

The need for NMU was to upskill lecturers to digital teaching and learning. Realising that they now offered fully online courses, but none of the lecturers actually ever attended a fully online course themselves. It was important for them to experience the course, but also to learn how to adjust what they do for online teaching – as it is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. Contexts differ, learners differ. The course helped us understand how to tackle these scenarios.  Anne-Mart explains, “I needed to understand the how – and the engaging experience was such a bonus as it really helped me learn. To be honest, I was not prepared for the intensity of the course, but it was really worth it. I had to learn how to bridge the gap between what best practice and what can be done in practice.”  

The Course Experience and Outcomes 

The DTX course was delivered to NMU over a period of five days. One of the outcomes highlighted by Anne-Mart was that the course blended theory and practical to a point where attendees could actually go and practically apply the theory. It meant that participants could take the theory and create a learning resource. Putting theory in practice creates a resource that the lecturer can carry on using throughout their future course planning or development.  

Another realisation was that online learning should not just be about assessments. There should be some elements of “fun” too and with the right application of tools, this is possible. This raised many questions, such as do we need to assess everything we do, just because it was done in this manner in the past? It became an opportunity to evaluate course material and to convert content to be UDL compliant.  

While this was a daunting concept, the way the course was structured also helped with this process. Participants gained confidence and now had a grasp of how to adjust content and presentations to suit the online learning environment. They realised that they have the capability if they just understand better what is needed and how to apply the technology – reflecting on what you have in place already and seeing how to adjust it. There was a shift from feeling overwhelmed, to feeling empowered. “The reflective practice aspect was phenomenal to bring in.” 

The Impact on Teaching Practises 

The sessions throughout the course helped participants to look at the technology at their disposal differently, “I looked at the online space that I’ve created, which is on Moodle. There are a few things I can add and tweak, but it’s not too bad. But it is not integrated with Teams in any way. So I recreated my platform.” 

Another important change after the course was the use of other applications to increase interactive activities and engagement, rather than just uploading content onto Moodle. Reducing assessments and finding ways to get away from just using the online space for uploading content. 

Anne-Mart mentions the barrier to asynchronous teaching before completing the course. Previously, they had tried to have more of a flipped approach, but they did not have the means to implement asynchronous methods in their classes. For the course, Anne-Mart developed her skills by tackling a presentation on teaching asynchronously. This helped Anne-Mart understand how to do so within a class context too. Realising that a lecturer does not always have to be “live” when teaching. After a few days of live-streaming classes, it is possible to step out and simply set aside consultation times and let students know when you are available. 

Realising there are other pathways as well ways of delivering content we’ve learned that we can hand over some of the work and let our participants use their autonomy to deliver their class content. This has changed how we engage with academics going forward.  

Academics on the course initially felt overwhelmed by the programme and in effect, the experience was a great equaliser of academic staff.  

Biggest Lessons Learnt 

Lessons learnt include chunking the information for students. In other words, bite-sized information is key, so that it is enough to digest, but not too much to process. We also learned that you have time to develop the course further as you go – not every course will be perfect.  

Secondly, academics learned that experience is the best way to learn how to deliver course material online. The process also taught them to be kind to themselves as well as their students. Both lecturers and students alike may feel like a fish out of water initially, together you will learn to swim.  

Thirdly, the collaboration through the course created a community of practice that can be continued after the course. It is so important for lecturers to speak to each other, share experiences, and build confidence in this manner.  

A big outcome from all of this was that lecturers who participated felt they now “speak the same language”. “We’ve learned the theory and also learned how to apply it.” Going forward lecturers have been enabled to teach more comfortably through digital teaching platforms.  

Want to learn more about our Digital Teaching eXpert course? Get in touch. Also, see our current promotion running here

What is Self-Citation?

Did you know that when you, as researcher, do not reference or recognise your own work in a research study, it is seen as self-plagiarism? Self-citation is essential to avoid plagiarism. The term self-citation refers to the recognition of your own work when you are expanding on previous research or referring to work you have previously published.  The reasoning behind this? Research is cumulative and therefore you must refer to and attribute prior foundational academic work.

How Should it Be Used?

There is a limit to self-citation, however. When a researcher uses self-citation primarily to create a bigger impact, it becomes a matter of ethics. This unethical behaviour is called excessive self-citation, also referred to as citation manipulation.  COPE states in a study from 2019 that, “When any of the above parties, editors, board members, reviewers, or authors add or request to add citations where the motivations are merely self-promotional this aim violates publication ethics and is unethical. Additionally, whether or not they are requested, citations to the editor’s work should not be added in the belief that this will increase the likelihood of the publication being accepted” (2019).

What Does Self-Citation Look Like?

Self-citation has been called out on numerous occasions by the scientific community. In one computer science example as pointed out by Nature in a study PLoS Biology the scientist “received 94% of his citations from himself or his co-authors up to 2017.” In this same data set, they list around 100 000 researchers of which 250 scientists have attained more than 50% of their citations from themselves or their co-authors. The median rate for self-citation is in fact 12.7% (Van Noorden & Chawla, 2019).

In other words, excessive self-citation is not easy to miss.

The researcher could easily commit citation manipulation when they want to publish work and increase the impact factor. This of course would open up doors for future publications. The journal, on the other hand, could accept it to raise its own impact factor, or it may be a journal that falls into a niche audience with limited topic choices (Sanfilippo et al., 2021).

What Impact Does Self-Citation Have on Academic Integrity?

There is a direct link between self-citation and academic integrity: citations, and thus self-citations, raise the academic reputation of a researcher or journal in the form of the impact factor score, which is a very visible indicator of reputation.

It can, however, have the opposite effect. As academics become increasingly aware of this form of abuse. It has become clear that the more self-citations there are, the more likely the author is trying to self-promote.

How Can This Problem of Self-Citation Be Addressed?

As a first step, raising awareness of self-citation abuse would contribute to the mitigation of misconduct.  It is important that this awareness and underlying drive for academic integrity would guide academics to use self-citation appropriately. To support this, policies are being developed along with objective measurements for self-citation.

iThenticate, by Turnitin, is the leading provider of the professional plagiarism detection & prevention technology used worldwide by scholarly publishers, research departments, and individual researchers and authors to ensure the originality of written work before publication.

Find out more: https://www.eiffelcorp.co.za/digital-learning-products/technology-solutions-for-business/ithenticate-professional-plagiarism-detection/

References:

COPE Discussion Article. 2019. Version 1 (July):3. Available Online. https://publicationethics.org/files/COPE_DD_A4_Citation_Manipulation_Jul19_SCREEN_AW2.pdf

Van Noorden, R. and Chawla, D.S. 2019 Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database. Nature. August. Available Online.  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02479-7

This blog originally appeared on Turnitin’s blog as posted below:

https://www.turnitin.com/blog/what-is-self-citation-and-what-does-it-have-to-do-with-academic-integrity