Project Leader: Dr James Foadi, Department of Mathematical Sciences

This project, which was awarded funding by the Teaching Development Fund (TDF) Seed aims to evaluate an effective and consistent feedback workflow, based on the Crowdmark platform for students’ assessment.

Crowdmark has introduced a series of digital tools, including a flexible and easy-to-use annotation software and the creation of a shared feedback comments database. These features allow detailed and multimedia feedback to be quickly added to students’ scripts, whilst consistently applying dynamic scoring across a marking team: this promises a better student assessment and feedback experience, alongside a time-saving for staff compared to existing methods. This proposal plans to to test Crowdmark for assessment, through individuals and teams of graders marking coursework to provide rich and consistent formative feedback on a range of different units. They will make full use of Crowdmark for the preparation of the assessment, marking, and return of marked scripts to students (with feedback). Students will submit and receive feedback through the Crowdmark platform. A follow-up consultation among graders and students will finalise the outcome of the feedback and grading experience. The findings of the project will be widely shared with the aim of delivering quality and timely feedback at scale.

Dr James Foadi organised a session in June 2023, which has been recorded for his end of project presentation. A blog has also been provided. This project has been awarded further funding for further trials with the tool.