Evaluating the impact of assessment analytics: monitoring and reporting on performance.

Cheryl Reynolds
Cath Ellis

University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom

 

Abstract:

Based on the use of electronic assessment and feedback across a large, geographically dispersed cohort, this paper argues that the use of technology presents educators and their institutions with some important, novel opportunities.  Assessment data that has hitherto been hidden or inaccessible can now be harvested and utilised for a number of key purposes.  Not least of these is the scope to monitor, analyse and report on progression and achievement across multiple sites, large cohorts  and different academic years.  The affordances of electronic assessment management allow this monitoring at macro, meso and micro level, establishing student achievement against broad aims and outcomes for the course but also at a very granular level with regard to individual competences such as punctuation and referencing.

The benefits that accrue are dual-facing:  it becomes possible to convey to students a sense of comprehensive and detailed treatment of their achievements in relation to other learners on their course and it also allows for highly efficient and effective reporting to professional and government bodies and inspectorates.  Data can be used to inform curriculum development such that the status and significance of assessment data is foregrounded as a way to raise quality and esteem. This paper offers some preliminary proposals as to how this dual-facing learning analytics strategy may function in practice, paying particular attention to the decisions that need to be made in the design phase and how these can be operationalised across even the largest and most complex modules.