Name and e-mail: Sabina Gheduzzi (S.Gheduzzi@bath.ac.uk) and Jos Darling (J.Darling@bath.ac.uk)

Keywords (pedagogical): feedback, evaluation

Discipline: Dept of Mechanical Engineering

Year/ability: Y1 – Y5

Course title: all undergraduate and postgraduate taught Mechanical Engineering degree programmes

Background

What took place?

A central collection of unit evaluations, unit information and feedback on exams was collated for Mechanical Engineering students in order to provide:

  • generic feedback on exams/assessment which is timely and easily accessible
  • information to help students make informed option choices for their next year’s study

What was the role of the technology?

A unit was created on Moodle to host feedback, assessment and evaluation documentation related to the Mechanical Engineering programmes (image 1) including:

  • A PowerPoint presentation for students on making option choices
  • A snapshot of the SAMIS Online Unit Evaluations for that year’s units
  • Unit details – aims, outcomes, taught contact, and method of assessment
  • Assessment statistics from the Board of Examiners (image 2)
  • Unit Assessment Feedback Sheets (image 3)

Image 1a

The SAMIS block was used to manually enrol all students taking Mechanical Engineering undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes on the unit on Moodle.  Where possible, students were enrolled using the degrre programme enrolment option in Moodle to cut down the administrative task.

A link to the Moodle unit was emailed to all students on the programmes to alert them to the available content and allow them to access it with one click rather than search for it in their list of courses.

Outcomes

How did the participants find it?

Students have been very positive in their responses and discussions at the Student Staff Liaison Committee suggest that it is provision that is well worth retaining.  Between February and May 2010 over three thousand views of the resources held in the Moodle unit were logged.

In particular, placement students found the feedback and evaluation information provided extremely helpful to guide them during the critical stage of making their final degrre programme choice.

The use of Moodle has been particularly beneficial for this cohort as the students are away from campus and it would be unfeasible to ask them to return and attend ‘options day’.  The Moodle unit was very effective in both maintaining their links with the Bath community of learners and giving them a better insight into option choices.

Image 2a

Issues/problems

Some concerns were raised that the provision of such detailed unit and assessment feedback might lead to a higher than usual number of appeals, yet the experience showed that this was not found to be the case.

Although linking to and uploading files in Moodle was relatively simple; formatting these links information within tables could be less straightforward.

What tips do you have for others?

Provide a disclaimer for the unit information provided to pre-empt issues arising from unforeseen changes to units eg: “Please note that while every effort has been made to verify the information provided; content, methods of assessment and staff involved in each unit might vary without notice.”

Image 3a

Plans for the future

Plans are under way for feedback and evaluation to be provided in a similar format in the next academic year.  Open archives of the units may also be provided on Moodle in order to provide a historical record of previous exam feedback so that students are able to cross reference it with past papers for exam revision.