Following on from the previous post, in this post I’ll reflect on what I think are the key messages to share with academic colleagues to convince them to give electronic marking a whirl:

It’s becoming industry standard

This is an issue which is exercising university senior managers, administrators and students alike. Across the sector, around the world, higher education institutions are scrambling to find affordable, sustainable ways of supporting and managing electronic assessment management. Having academics marking electronically is crucial to making this work and many institutions are choosing an ‘all-in’ approach. Refusing to participate in it is becoming increasingly less of an option for academic staff. Recognising that marking online is a skill that you need to take the time to develop is important and therefore encouraging colleagues to see it as an important part of professional development is crucial. After all – academics who say they can’t or don’t want to develop the new skill of marking  electronically are doing something they would be unlikely to accept from their students.

It will make your life easier

Not having to lug heavy piles of essays around, having them all backed up so you can’t lose them (or your dog can’t eat their homework) and not having to photocopy or post anything to anyone for moderation or external examination makes life a whole lot easier. You can automate common comments, use a rubric to calculate the grade and it all gets automatically returned to students. Not having to enter or re-enter marks is enough, in itself, to convince many reluctant colleagues. You can even see if and when students check their results. Being able to correct your mistakes is also a big win. Seeing all of this makes it become a lot more apparent just how much administrative gumph comes with paper-based marking systems. A lot of people remain sceptical about reading so much on screen – but very few admit to printing out their emails to read them.

It will speed up your marking

Many of the aspects which mean that electronic marking is easier also mean that it is quicker. Automated common comments and return to students, and the fact that a lot of people type faster and more clearly than they can write, means that it is simply a quicker way to mark. Being able to simultaneously do originality checking while you’re marking in itself saves at least a couple of minutes per essay which really adds up over time.

It will make your marking more bearable

Let’s face it – marking is pretty much the least enjoyable part of being an academic. It also takes up a huge amount of our time. A lot of the things that mean that it speeds us up also means that a lot of the drudgery is taken out of it. Because the labour of explaining composition problems (punctuation, grammar, spelling etc) is automated, it allows you to spend a greater proportion of your marking time dealing with what they’re writing about rather than how they’re writing it. So – not only are you spending less time doing your marking, the time you are spending on it feels more rewarding and productive. You can also get a much clearer view of the substance of their work because the ‘clutter’ of marking composition problems is cleared away.

Students like it

Not only do students like it, increasingly they are expecting it and, in some institutions, demanding it. (See the first comment on it becoming industry standard above. This is not a coincidence.) They find it much more convenient than having to print, travel into campus and, in some institutions, queue up to get a receipt. They really do have better things to do with their time and money. Getting an automatic, electronic proof of receipt is enormously reassuring to them. They also like being able to go through their feedback in private. The whole process of getting your work handed out in class can be a form of ritual humiliation for students. The feedback on their work (which has taken up so much of our time and energy – see the comment above) is also unlikely to get any kind of focused attention in this context.

If we all pull together and use these tools as a team the potential benefits to all of us and to our students is astronomical. The first institutions to really crack this are going to reap the rewards. Then we will really feel the wind in our hair.

It’s becoming clear to me that one of the biggest and most important issues in Electronic Assessment Management is convincing academic staff to come on board with it. This is particularly the case when it comes to electronic marking. I’ve given many presentations to academic colleagues in many different institutions now, including my own, and it is always the most pressing issue.

I’m growing increasingly convinced that thinking through what it takes to convince an audience of academic colleagues to give online marking a try is one of the most pressing issues we face. Figuring out what the key messages are, the typical attitudes of our ‘audience’ and how best to communicate these key messages to them is going to be crucial.

Over the last eighteen months or so, I’ve presented on the benefits of online marking countless times to audiences made up of learning technologists, administrators, senior managers but mostly to academic colleagues. The ‘problem’ of convincing academics usually emerges as a warning from the senior manager who has invited me to speak, telling me that while there are a handful of staff who are keen to go forward, that there is also a block who are either resistant to the idea or steadfastly refusing it. In some instances these colleagues have already had their fingers burnt somehow, perhaps because they’ve been forced into something that they didn’t want to do, were ill prepared for it or were offered inadequate preparation and support. Sometimes these people haven’t given it a go but are simply resistant. I guess we would call them (and they would sometimes proudly call themselves) luddites: colleagues who have made a decision to not like electronic marking even before they’ve given it a try. While these are always going to be the toughest part of the crowd to convince, I’m growing increasingly sure that they’re the ones we should worry about the least.

It’s very easy to assume that the early adopters who are raring to go or already using the tool don’t need our attention – but they should not be neglected. If they are already marking online, they have probably done so in the face of administrative systems which are not set up to accommodate them. Making sure that the administrative conditions are ‘right’ such that their attitude and working patterns are rewarded is crucial.

By far and away the more important people to convince are the large body of people in the middle. These ‘middle folk’ are not early adopters, nor are they steadfastly resistant; this middle block simply need a good reason to change what they’re already doing. By convincing this middle block to give it a go, we can achieve a kind of ‘tipping point’ in the current business-speak parlance, whereby the critical mass of academic staff (and therefore students) are experiencing electronic submission, marking and return. Once this has been achieved, it is much harder for the resistant block to stand their ground. Once we have this, we have wind in our sails and a cultural change can realistically be achieved.

Here’s a quick explanation of how we are beginning to think about using data generated through GradeMark in the School of Education and Professional Development as a tool for enhancing the curriculum and improving student achievement and progression…
Getting the most out of GradeMark

Last week I had two very productive discussions with team members about our qualitative data collection strategy. It’s fantastic to be able to rely on others who have more experience and knowledge about this than myself and Kathrine and Ola helped me – in one relatively short meeting – to get a much better handle on what it involves and how we can approach it.

They’ve put together a rough plan which should be really easy to implement this year. The key things I’ve learned in this process are:

– the need to gather data which is focused and specific

– finding ways to do that focusing isn’t as easy as I thought but can be effectively structured into the teaching and learning process – so it operates as a learning experience for the students as well as a data-gathering exercise for us.

The next big thing to tackle is the ethics side of things – something that I’m working on with another one of my  hats on: as chair of the school teaching and learning committee.

Cheryl and I have had a chance to talk through all of this and have come to some very helpful agreements. So – it’s back to google docs for us for some of that shared editing for which we are becoming (justly) famous.