Using online assessment to support the development of referencing skills

Abstract

In the teaching of library and information skills, assessments are usually focused on measuring the skills gained by participants at the end of a seminar or course of study. This summative form of assessment can be a useful way to obtain an overview of the learning that has taken place. Information from this assessment could be used to grade students or to award credit. Formative assessments, however, can enable participants to learn during the course rather than simply gain a mark at the end of it. Feedback from formative assessments can add quality to the learning experience. It can also provide information, which leads to an improvement in both the learning by participants and the teaching methods used. 1 Using assessment to support learning There are a number of ways in which formative assessment could be used to support the teaching of library and information skills. In this column, we report on a pilot project in which online formative assessments were used to support the development of referencing skills for academic writing in undergraduate students at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Dundee. Prior to the project taking place, referencing skills at the school were taught during a 1-h lecture to first-year undergraduate students, where there was little opportunity to gain 'hands-on' practice of constructing references or citations. No further formal teaching on this topic was offered to students in later years. As the submission dates for written assignments approached, students regularly requested one-to-one support for referencing in their essay work from lecturers and library staff. This support usually involved answering the same types of questions repeatedly and was very time-consuming to provide. It became clear to a number of academic and library staff that there was a need to improve teaching practice on the topic of refer-encing skills, and an investigative project using formative online assessment was developed for second-year undergraduate students. Why was online assessment selected for this project? The Scottish Qualifications Authority 2 suggests that there are many advantages in using online assessment, including improved learning, objective marking, reduced marking load, automated results collation and improved access. Online activities for formative assessment can also help tutors, who have limited contact time with students, to continue teaching beyond the classroom. This could be particularly appropriate in the development of library and information skills, where opportunities for face-to-face contact with tutors may be more restricted. Project design and methodology The design of the project at the School of Nursing and Midwifery required that participants attempt a number of short online assessments. The first step in developing these assessments was the creation of question banks. The university's virtual learning environment (VLE) provides a facility to develop simple assessments using the Blackboard software. 3 However, QuestionMark Perception, a specialist assessment software 4 that the university uses for formal online assessments, was chosen for this project as it allows greater flexibility in writing and editing questions in response to student feedback. The study used three types of assessments: pre-study (diagnostic), multiple attempt (formative) and final (summative). The pre-study assessment of 12 questions was made available to students