Working with Technology in Assessment

Since 2005, I have been working as a Teaching Fellow at the COLMSCT CETL based at the Open University who have funded a project, in which ten lecturers have been using Tablet PCs to provide feedback to one hundred and fifty students. Students submit their work to lecturers in .doc format who provide their feedback using the Tablet PC to first create a layer over the students piece of assessment. Once the virtual layer has been created over the students piece of work, a lecturer can annotate the .doc at points in a students script that are relevant to the points that need to be raised.

Some of the most useful tools in the Tablet PC tool bar, to use in providing feedback are, the electronic highlighter and eraser.

Current reseaerch has shown that lecturers marking electronic tutor marked assignments, typically .doc, are able to provide personalised feedback at a relevant point in a student's piece of assessment using paper technology such as a Tablet PC., evalutaion through in-depth interview and questionnaire, shows that this was important to both students and lecturers alike.

Some lecturers have felt that the Tablet PC allows greater creativity in assessment than technologies such as paper and pen and PC and a keyboard input device.