Hi all,
I would echo Roberts comments about keeping up to speed through the
conferences, especially as the UK's CAA conference is focussed and brings
together active participants on many of the topics mentioned so far.
My personal opinions are;
1. QuestionMark and TOIA turf wars should not be resolved by individual
practitioners but by a more holistic approach - the training and
infrastructure issues are considerable costs too and bottom-up effort needs
top-down sponsorship to change practice on a significant scale.
2. The potential for the student mobile phone has not been investigated fully
IMHO. I wrote and tried a web based program that processed text strings of
student answers given in lectures to PowerPoint based questions. Allows
feedback and potentially some secure summative testing. Problem was the
processing time for the text messages to come through. I suspect that phone
based services will have a role further down the line. I know Dundee have a
very popular online peer marking system that delivers results this way.
3. Personal Response Systems. PRS is established in small classes at School
level and some HE sites are tooling up for more. Instant monitoring and
feedback etc. This is a thread which could run on its own. I used one in my
lecture yesterday with 180+ and they loved it. Some minor technical problems
but well worth it. It fits under the sophisticated level that on-line
assessment systems expect and may be a good vehicle to develop interest
amongst the more technophobic, leading to better support for the more complex
CAA effort.
4. Assessment content can be exchanged between systems - it needs more
nagging of the system providers to preserve IPR of the authors for a
marketplace to be established. I hear publishers are adding more QTI MCQs to
their texts but they are thin on the ground.
5. A bit of a plug here...Contact your HE Subject centre (a.k.a LTSN) if you
want to build contacts using CAA in your subject domain. You may find that
there are events in the pipeline but without a demand the subject centre is
unlikely to allocate resources to run one. It's a currently lively topic and
you may push an open door, especially if you offer to host one! Practitioners
on the same subject domain are usually very good at keeping the ball rolling,
you just have to get enough interest at the same time.
Regards,
Terry McAndrew
C&IT Manager
LTSN Centre for Bioscience
Room 8.49n
Worsley Medical and Dental building
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
Tel: +44 (0) 113 343 3593
Fax: +44 (0) 113 343 5894
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/
This Subject Centre is now part of the Higher Education Academy
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Cummings [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 28 September 2004 12:21
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Anyone interested...
>
> Hi Robert
>
> Yes - there is remarkable response. Sorry to hear about
> Joanna Bull. I never met the lady but was an admirer of her work.
>
> Having generated the beginnings of a discussion, I would hate
> to stifle it with too much attention to protocol and
> formality. At this stage at least I view ALL contributions
> as worthwhile. After all, most anything is better than lists
> of conference dates :-)
>
> Best Wishes
>
> Alan C
>
>
>
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