Digital assignments: How shall we grade them?

A couple of years ago, I took the decision to encourage students to submit their assignments in forms other than the traditional, paper based essay. It was about time. Should we persist in assessing students in modes of communication they may never use in the real world? I therefore decided to give them different opportunities to express their learning. Many of the modules I teach at my university deal with alternative methods of learning and teaching, and focus a great deal on new and emerging technologies. It was therefore both opportune and appropriate that I should lock assessment into the mode of learning and the subject matter. That year, one or two students from the group were courageous enough to accept my challenge, and submitted their assignments in the form of blogs. Most played safe and kept to the familiar pathway by submitting standard essays, which was not a problem. Last year, several more students submitted their assignments in blog format, and one or two created videos as their assignments. I believe it's a trend that will grow in pace. Over the next few academic years I predict that submitting assignments in alternative digital formats will become the norm. Then they won't be 'alternative' any more.

Clearly, there are several questions to contemplate here.

The first question is how do you grade these assignments, if they are not presented in traditional essay mode? On this issue, you need to agree with students prior to submission over what the assessment criteria are, and exactly for what the marks are going to be awarded. These criteria must be equalised across all the possible submission formats. How for example, have you agreed an equivalency for wordcount in a video? How should a blog be structured and sequenced, when there may be several non-linear posts contained within it? Would a hyperlink in a blog be equivalent to a reference in an essay? It may be prudent to present your students with model assignments in blog, video, wiki and other non-traditional formats so they can see what they need to be aiming at. Modelling best practice is a very powerful approach and if applied appropriately can offer cognitive apprenticeship to learners.

The second question is how can you ensure that students put the equivalent cognitive effort into say, a video, as they would into a 4000 word assignment? Can a 5 minute video contain the same level and quality of academic discussion as a 2000 word essay? Or is it an easier option? Firstly, you need yourself to be aware of what is possible within the formats and technologies that students will use. How difficult is it for example, to put a voice-over track or a music track onto a video, or overlay captions? If you don't know what the issues are, and the effort involved, you may be fooled into thinking students have worked hard (or not hard enough) to achieve the end product. Secondly, over a course of several months, it may be a good strategy to require students to create assignments in several formats, so they gain an insight into what each can afford, and acquire skills in presenting their academic ideas and arguments in several formats.

Whatever you decide to do, it will be imperative that you ensure all assessment criteria are applied equally across all assignments, no matter what wrapper they are presented in. I'm quite clear with my students. Good structure, good grammar and readability (or watchability), critical analysis and evaluation, good data application and presentation, clear arguments and acknowledgement of sources - must all be evidenced in the assignment I give to my students, in no matter what format it is presented.

There are further, procedural and administrative issues that each institution will need to deal with. What if support services cannot (or will not) accommodate the submission of non-paper assignments? What if your external examiner is unwilling to accept blogs, wikis or videos as legitimate academic evidence of learning? For the first issue, it all depends on how your admin system is set up. Usually a few words or friendly discussion with the relevant manager will be enough to adjust systems to enable admin staff to process non-linear and/or non-paper based assignments. For the second issue - I would advise that you to change your external examiner.

I'm certain this is not complete. Please feel free to add your own ideas and advice in the comments box below.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons


Digital assignments: How shall we grade them? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.