Meaningful feedback: using technology

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Meaningful feedback using technology

• Using Yorkshare to feed-in and feed-back to
  Politics students
• Dr Rob Aitken (Politics Department)

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Problem

• Academic Skill Essay Writing
• Giving information is not enough
• Use of Yorkshare
• States, Development and Conflict (1st yr)
• Ethnicity and Conflict (2nd yr)
• Tools
• Blogs, Safe Assignment, Gradebook

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States Development and Conflict

• Information on Academic writing with examples
• Construct and support an argument
• Tasks to put knowledge into practice
• Plagiarism and Referencing quizzes
• Use of bibliographic databases
• Reading Logs
• Paragraph task

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Ethnicity and Conflict

• Instructions on the Formative Essay task
• Construct and support an argument
• Submitted online via Safe Assignment
• Feedback focussed on the extent to which they
  have completed task
• Feedback via Gradebook
• Instructions on the Assessed Essay task

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Use of Yorkshare

• Feed-in
• Set expectations on academic writing
• Construct and support an argument
• Instructions and examples
• Links embedded in student tasks
• Student Tasks
• Reinforce academic skills
• Feedback
• Reinforce message on academic writing
• Easily accessed and permanent

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Did it work?

• Anecdotally Yes
• Student A who had been getting 22s for essays in
  May able to improve to a 1st and high 21 in
  October.
• Overall of students in EC 2007
• EC essay average (Oct 07) 64.85
• May 2007 essay average 62.74
• October 2007 other essays 64.67