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Assignment Exemplars: Creating a one stop site for students

Chris Campbell

The University of Queensland

Australia

chris.campbell@uq.edu.au Abstract: At times students can struggle making the transition from secondary school to university. Often the lack of structure is something they grapple with along with assignment expectations. To assist students a Faculty-wide academic literacy Blackboard website was created for first year students at a large Australian University. This site, called "Knowledge-Making in the Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences with a key component being the placement of annotated assignment exemplars for first year students to access so that they have a model assignment with annotations as well as a marking rubric so they can see the standard required and what is expect. This study investigated students' experiences pertaining to the Knowledge Making Blackboard site for two first year education courses that pre-service teachers undertake in Semester 1 of each year.

Introduction

Students, particularly first year undergraduate students can find it difficult to settle into studying at

university as many things are different. Students are often expected to complete assignments with little information

and they can struggle to become strategic learners. By creating a closed website that contains assignment exemplars

students can see what is expected of them in an assignment and then strive to complete the assignment in the correct

way. One site, the Knowledge Making website that is contained in a university Blackboard site assists undergraduate

students in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at The University of Queensland.

Literature Review

Literature about online learning management platforms is concerned with the personalised experience

students have when engaging with different learning aspects provided by such platforms (Peter et al, 2009). Often,

the focus is on semantic web technologies "to enhance the platform's personalisation and adaptability for the learner

by providing the learner with a bespoke learning package based on their specific requirements" (Peter et al, 2009, p.

1). This article offers further insights into this area by contributing to another area of personalization, the role of

learning management systems as repositories of student sample assignments. Studies have found that offering online content to students enabled the presence of conditions that

enhanced student engagement and promoted the use of critical discourse, in particular through synchronous rather

than asynchronous communication (Heafner et al, 2013). We are expanding this view to investigate students'

asynchronous engagement when provided with annotated sample assignments. These sample assignments are

offered as targeted learning resources to the students, and therefore present a formal and structured learning tool, as

opposed to the extraordinarily varied and complex learning resources available in an informal and unstructured way

online (Campanella, 2011). There are a lack of studies which focus on how students use sample assignments as online learning

resources. We aim to fill this gap with this study on students' approaches to and reflections about accessing sample

assignments in an online learning platform. Studies have shown that frequent engagement with online resources -1908-

SITE 2016

Savannah

GA

United

States

March 21
26
2016

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during the duration of a semester course yielded better overall learning outcomes than accessing these resources

only at the beginning and end of a course (Knight, 2010). One important factor for frequency of access might be the

perceived ease of use of online resources (Lee, 2008), and our findings aim to contribute to an understanding of how

perceived site manageability and ease of use interacted with students' perceptions on the usefulness of online sample

assignments.

In a study on learners preferences in using online learning resources, nearly all (95.4%, n=65) of the

students preferred shared use of learning resources. Students perceived the shared use of online resource/information

as enhancing learner-centred learning in a constructive manner and as broadening their knowledge and information

skills together in a time-effective way (Li, 2009, p. 302). Thus this study investigated how students perceive the

availability and usefulness of shared sample assignments in an online learning environment.

There are early indications that the use of online resources in general can lift student results (Hostager,

2014), and the peer sharing of resources is generally supported by students. However, while web-based reciprocal

peer reviews of assignments often include the explicit processes of modelling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation,

reflection and exploration (Yang, 2011), students in our study were not involved in any peer review processes;

instead, they were able to access sample assignments that included the annotated feedback from the tutors who had

marked these assignments. Our survey aimed to uncover if students used the sample online assignments for

individual learning strategies that approximated the processes more familiar in peer reviews. In other words, did

students report that they used the sample assignments and the annotated feedback for such processes as modelling,

scaffolding, reflection and others?

This study offers an analysis of qualitative student survey data to this effect, and include a thematic

categorisation about self-reported learning strategies and processes when accessing sample peer assignments as

online learning resources. Peer editors in peer review processes also naturally engage in probing and collaborative

styles of feedback known as discovery mode interactions (Crossman & Kite, 2012), and our study wanted to uncover

if individual students accessing sample assignments report replication of such a probing discovery modes by simply

reading previous assignments and tutor feedback. While approaches to self-managing learning in online

environments have been categorised into students who are "Mastery oriented", "Task focused" and "Minimalist in

effort" (del Valle & Duffy, 2009), accessing sample assignments in itself represents an active form of learning that

makes use of non-compulsory online learning resources.

One of the areas we wish to contribute to is the growing interest in how students use feedback, both from

peers and from tutors/markers, for assignments in the tertiary learning environment. Early findings have shown that

there are no types of feedback prioritised over others, and that much feedback is simply ignored (Walker, 2015).

Instead, feedback use depended on individual learner characteristics and strategies (Walker, 2015). This study offers

insights into self-reported use of sample assignments as part of the overall use of feedback.

The knowledge making site is located as a Blackboard community site with all students who are enrolled in

courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty given access to the Site. As can be seen in Figure 1 the site is

very well developed across the Faculty with all schools represented. The site features sections on your future, 5

essay steps, in your disciplines, research projects and life@uni. The section 'in your disciplines' is another way to

get to the 'Education' section of the site. This study focuses on the School of Education and how students enrolled in

teacher education are using the site to enhance their learning.-1909-SITE 2016 - Savannah, GA, United States, March 21-26, 2016

Figure 1. The first page of the Knowledge Making site that all first year humanities students can access.

From the literature review the following research questions were developed:

1.What sections of the Knowledge Making Blackboard site were accessed?

2.In what ways did the students find the assignment exemplars useful for their studies?

Methodology

The course coordinators of two first year, first semester courses placed annotated assignment exemplars

into the Knowledge Making Blackboard Site to assist students with their course assignments. The first year courses

are EDUC1029 Introduction to Education (EDUC1029) with 275 students enrolled and EDUC1049 Learning Tools

for the 21st Century (EDUC1049) with 325 students enrolled. Due to administrative reasons some students were

enrolled in both courses, with there being 126 enrolled in both first year courses.

Data was collected through an online survey in each course, with EDUC1049 Learning Tools for the 21st

Century being the main data collection point. There were 220 students from EDUC1049 Learning Tools for the 21st

Century who participated in the study and 93 students from EDUC1029 Introduction to Education who participated.

Students who participated in the study ranged in ages from 18 to 28 years of age. Students were asked if they used

the Knowledge Making site as well as in in what ways they used it and how it helped them with their assignments.

Students were also asked what other features of the site they used, however this isn't reported in this paper.

As can be seen in Figure 2 once students go into the School of Education section of the Knowledge Making

Site there is a brief introduction and then two active sections. One is a Peer Mentoring section where students can

ask other students, 'Peer Mentors' questions about assignments and university life in general and the other is the

Assignment Exemplar section. Results for this study are based around the Assignment Exemplar section of the

Knowledge Making Site.-1910-SITE 2016 - Savannah, GA, United States, March 21-26, 2016 Figure 2. Education introduction page with two links available.

Results and Discussion

All first year students were able to access the Knowledge Making site with students from EDUC1029 and

EDUC1049 encouraged to access the site. In lectures for both courses students were shown the site, the location of

the assignment exemplars and information about the exemplars, for example, that they are annotated and that in

some cases the marking rubric and assignment feedback was included and in all cases the final grade for the

assignment was included. As is shown in Figure 3, there are eight Film Analysis assignment exemplars and five

social justice essays for EDUC1029. The assignment exemplars for EDUC1049 include three blog assignment

examples and four IWB assignment examples.-1911-SITE 2016 - Savannah, GA, United States, March 21-26, 2016

Figure 3. The Assignment Exemplar Gallery for the School of Education.

Demographics

Students who participated in this study were between 18 and 28 years of age and were mostly in their first

year of university, with 71% of the EDUC1049 students in their first year and 21% in their second year. Only 5% of

students were in their third year and 2% in their final year of university. In the EDUC1049 cohort 63% of

respondents were female and 37% were male. The students in EDUC1049 were asked how comfortable they are

with technology with 38% (n=82) of students stating they are 'comfortable' while 31% (n=67) stated they are 'most

comfortable'. Only 1% (n=3) of students were 'least comfortable'.

Knowledge Making Site use

Students in both courses were asked if they used the Knowledge Making site with 47% of students in

EDUC1029 and 56% of students in EDUC1049 stating they used it. In EDUC1029 students used the sections of '5

essay steps', 'assignment exemplars' and 'peer mentoring' equally. The students enrolled in EDUC1049 accessed

the assignment exemplars (n=69), 5 essay steps (n=12), research project tips (n=8) and life@uni (n=2).

Table 1. Number of students in each course who used the Knowledge Making site.

CourseYes (%)No (%)

EDUC102947 (n=44)53 (n=49)

EDUC104956 (n=120)44 (n=96)

Students in EDUC1049 were asked if they found the knowledge making site useful for their studies (Table 2).

Generally students found it a useful site for the course with 74% (mean = 3.88) of respondents either agreeing or

strongly agreeing. 77% (mean = 4.04) of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that they found the knowledge

making site useful for assisting them in their assignments.-1912-SITE 2016 - Savannah, GA, United States, March 21-26, 2016

Table 2. Student responses regarding the Knowledge Making site.

QuestionStrongly

DisagreeDisagreeNeither

agree or disagreeAgreeStrongly

AgreeTotal

ResponsesMean

The "Knowledge Making in the

Arts, Humanities and Social

Sciences" was a useful

technology enhancing my learning for this subject?522358281163.88

I found it useful for my

assignments.621746441154.04 Students were asked how the Knowledge Making Site supported their studies and most students (n=86)

who responded (n=96) stated it was for assignment assistance. Students often made positive comments with regards

to viewing and using the assignment exemplars. EDUC1029 student stated "example assignments were

fantastic!!!!!!! I felt like I could actually learn how to write better, instead of just being assessed for my own abilities

all the time, without feedback on how to improve". One EDUC1029 student stated "the exemplar essays are very

useful, just to get a general idea of what exactly is expected". One student commented on the fact that s/he used the assignment examples to gain "guidelines on the

referencing conventions I was expected to use". This suggests the assignment exemplars were important for

providing information on this. Other students looked forward to the grading expectations of the assignment with one

stating it "helps me know what tutors are looking for when marking".

From all the student comments there was only one comment that was negative that stated "the assignment

examples were out of date and didn't accurately represent what we were supposed to do". This statement is curious

as the exemplars were new prior to the start of semester and were only provided on current assignments. It can be

assumed the student was thinking about exemplars from another course that was not a School of Education course.

Some students did not use the Knowledge Making site and reasons cited for this were generally because

they were unaware of it, although one student stated it was due to "laziness" and other stated that s/he didn't feel the

need to use it in this course "although it may come in handy during exams for other subjects. As we don't have an

exam for this subject I will not use it for this particular subject," meaning they will not use it for EDUC1049.

Overall, the students accessed several areas of the Knowledge Making Blackboard site with most accessing

the assignment exemplars. These helped the students in several ways including with referencing assistance, grading

expectations and for essay writing hints and tips.

Conclusion

This site has assisted with students in helping them complete their assignments by providing exemplars.

Students have found that it informs them of student expectations while at university as well as providing useful

information on essay writing, and other information that is useful to students.

The site has continued to be added to since first semester this year and will continue to be built on in the

future. In the future, planning will need to continue to be ensure assignment exemplars are up to date as student

assignments for the courses change.-1913-SITE 2016 - Savannah, GA, United States, March 21-26, 2016

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the role of the HASS Faculty and Educational Designer, Inge Matt and e-Learning

Coordinator, Chris Frost in the development and management of the Faculty-wide "Knowledge Making in the Arts,

Humanities and the Social Sciences" community Blackboard site and the HASS Peer Mentoring Program. We

received funding through a School of Education Teaching and Learning Grant to add assignment exemplars to the

Knowledge Making Blackboard site.

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Educational Technology, 42(4), 687-700.-1914-SITE 2016 - Savannah, GA, United States, March 21-26, 2016

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