Electronic Feedback Software

Dr Phil Denton, LJMU School of Pharmacy and Chemistry, has developed an MS Office application that can be used by tutors to generate and email feedback to students.

How does the application work?

Electronic Feedback is an MS Office Marking Assistant that can generate and email MS Word processed reports to students. The software can return considerably more feedback to students, in a shorter space of time, than traditional approaches would normally allow.

As well as generating feedback, the software can also be used to analyse the distribution of both marks and standard comments. It can also be used to detect instances of plagiarism between pairs of students.

The software consists of 5 files, stored in the same folder:

Guide15.xls, an Excel file that is an interactive user guide,
Feedback15.xls, an Excel file that generates customisable feedback,
Fb15.doc, a Word file that formats and emails feedback,
Tutorial15.xls, an example Feedback14 file, containing specimen data,
Tutorial15.doc, instructions on how to run the self-guided tutorial.

It is recommended that all new users print-off the Word document Tutorial15.doc

Using the software is straightforward. Feedback15.xls is opened and the tutor enters the details of a particular assessment activity, a list of student names, and the feedback comments. Comments are divided into four types:

Grade comments - These are those remarks which depend on the overall mark awarded to the student for their work. e.g. you may wish to give the comment "First class work." to those students with marks greater than 70%.
General comments - These are those statements that you want the whole class to receive. Typically, they would relate the marker's overall response to the work submitted by the class.
Personal comments - These are statements directed at individual students.
Standard comments - These are those statements that are anticipated to be required repeatedly during marking and can be entered in two distinct styles. In 'Criterion' style, comments are organised under discrete headings, 'Introduction', 'Conclusion' etc. This is a useful feature when marking essay type work. In 'Normal' style, statements are entered as a list. Each standard comment is assigned a unique reference number and can be readily allocated to individual students, either by selecting the statement from a drop-down picking list or entering the reference number. Tutors may review the allocation of comments across the entire group, or on a tutor-by-tutor basis. This could reveal, for example, that students had difficulties with a particular aspect of the assignment. It is also possible to analyse the inputted data to find pairs of student allocated identical or similar standard comments. Initial work suggest that this feature can be used to detect instances of collusion.
When users select 'Create Feedback', the software automatically opens Fb15.doc and a Word document containing the feedback reports is created. These may then be printed, or sent to students as an email message or attachment.

Registering for a copy of the software

Refinements

28/09/2009

V15.1: Version 15.1 Released

28/09/2009

Corrected Faults

28/09/2009 V15.1: No known faults.

23/10/2009 V15.1: Create feedback routine stalls and reports ‘Bad parameter’ on some machines. Incorporation of header image from Fbheader.doc causes Create Feedback to stall with no error message in Office 2007. Borders appear in emails even if they were not selected on the Template.

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