A survey on staff and student’s opinions of Submitting and Grading Electronically (SaGE) was distributed via NILE between 5/2/2013 and 5/3/2013. This was collated and the results are now available.
As part of responding to the responding to the many items which were raised in the survey, a group with representation from across the University has met and are addressing each of the items which are being raised.
Staff within the Schools should contact their School representative(s) in the first instance who will take the items to the SaGE Steering group. Other staff should contact representatives within their areas in the first instance or Rob Howe to raise comments for the group.
A number of queries have been raised with the Learning Technologists about Grade Centre (GC) columns reverting to display a numeric value rather than UG/PG letter. This typically happens when a tutor changes the settings for the Turnitin (Tii) assignment after adjusting the Primary Display setting in the GC to display a letter instead of the numerical score. Turnitin have indicated that this is because of the way that Tii integrates with Blackboard (NILE) and as such the system is working properly. Tii have suggested that we submit a product enhancement request asking that if the GC primary display is changed to a letter then any subsequent changes to the Tii settings would not be overridden, which we have done. In the meantime …
- When setting up your Tii submission points, please think very carefully about what date you select for a post date. The University permits 4 working weeks from the submission date to the date when the feedback and grades should be released to students and we therefore recommend you choose your postdate accordingly.
- If you do have to change the post date for any reason, please remember that you will need to check your GC column settings and ensure that the column displays the appropriate letter rather than the numerical score.
- Don’t forget to ensure that the GC column is hidden from students until the post date (open the column menu in the GC, click Show/Hide to Users. Ensure the symbol indicating the column is hidden from students appears in the column header).
If you have any questions about this then please get in touch with the team.
If you record grades for the assessments on NILE in the Grade Centre, you can now pull off the grades from NILE and pass them to the SAT in around 2 minutes! If you do not record your grades in the Grade Centre yet have a look at the Overview of grading in NILE guidance to find out more about how to. Get in touch with the Learning Technologists for bespoke advice and/or to arrange a session with your own teaching teams, if required.
All of the Student Administration Team members are happy to accept grades in this format: Follow the guidance for downloading the Grade Centre report and save time on recording grades on the student record system/passing grades to the SAT.
Any problems, give us a shout!
Staff and students are being asked to fill in the SaGE survey available on NILE now, for the next few weeks (links also below). Please use this as an opportunity to let us know your thoughts on using the tools in the SaGE process based on your own experiences.
The new schedule of Spring 2013 SaGE awareness events are now available for staff to sign up.
These sessions will provide staff with an opportunity to ensure they are familiar with the tools within NILE which will allow students to submit electronically and for them to provide feedback.
The first hour will consist of a presentation and demonstration, with the remaining hour for those staff who wish to stay and try the material on their own modules in NILE or a training module in NILE with the benefit of the Learning Technologist present.
The schedule and link to sign up is shown below:
| Date | Time | Location |
| 16/1 | 2-4 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 18/1 | 2-4 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 23/1 | 10-12 | MB6 – Avenue Campus |
| 29/1 | 2-4 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 31/1 | 10-12 | MB6 – Avenue Campus |
| 1/2 | 10-12 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 7/2 | 2-4 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 11/2 | 2-4 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 13/2 | 2-4 | MB6 – Avenue Campus |
| 21/2 | 10-12 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 26/2 | 2-4 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
Signup using the link below:
If staff wish to have bespoke training then contact the Learning Technology Team on ext 2696 or via email at LTSupport@northampton.ac.uk.
Staff who wish to feedback on the SaGE process generally should use the comments feature on the link below:
http://blogs.northampton.ac.uk/sage/2012/06/22/moving-forward-with-sage/
Tagged with: Training
SaGE has been rolled out across the institution and we are continuing to review its uptake by staff and students. Marking electronically enables feedback to be legible, accessible by all and will eventually be more efficient. The transition to online marking is highlighting a number of procedural changes which are currently being addressed.
We currently have different stages of practice ongoing across all the schools. There are a number of users that are already piloting the end to end (submission to external moderation) process where everything is delivered, submitted, marked and fed back fully electronically. There are others that are just getting to grips with the basics of marking electronically and not giving their students a grade through NILE. There are some that are piloting the use of the Rubric tool to build grades and provide clear and concise criteria for assessment within the tools used for submission and marking. The varying practice across Fields and Schools makes developing a central process more challenging, but not impossible. It does impact on the time scales of implementing such a process(es), however. We are currently working on new Workflows that will have more detailed guidance on the second marking and external moderation process we recommend. Keep an eye on the link and this blog for the release of the new version.
If you include steps in your assessment process that you would like to make sure are included/catered for in our recommendations please get in touch with us at LTSupport@northampton.ac.uk to let us know what they are.
Learning Technologists aligned with each School are on hand to support and develop practice. We continue to work with tutors to integrate technology into their assessments, whether that be a simple text based essay, videos, reflective writing etc. Have a look at the Technology for Assessment guide for more information about using electronic tools for assessment. For any advice about using technology in your teaching and assessments practice please get in touch with your Learning Technologist who will be able to help set up the tools and advise you on their use.
Further training sessions on SaGE are now available. If you are unable to attend these or wish to organise one to one, or group bespoke training then please get in touch and we will deliver training for your needs.
Tagged with: update
A few people have asked how they can use a spell checker within Turnitin GradeMark. Generally if you use Google Chrome as your Internet Browser spelling errors will be underlined with the red zigzagged line under the mispelled word. However, the dictionary on Chrome is US English. Also, there are some versions of Chrome that cause various elements of GradeMark to behave ‘weirdly’ (sorry, that’s the best word I could come up with for it!).
There is a way you can use Firefox to check spelling with a UK English dictionary. This is the browser we recommend that you use for NILE anyway, so it’s probably for the best really. There a few steps involved, but as always the LearnTech team has developed some guidance on how you can get this set up on your PC. Click the link below to open the guide.
Spellchecking and Turnitin(PDF, 904.4 KB)
Guidance from the Health & Safety Office has been updated for Online Marking. General guidance on the use of computers still applies to electronic marking so there is nothing within the document that specically talks about SaGE and the processes involved, but the principles remain the same and the pointers should be followed whatever the computer is being used for.
Online Marking: Advice on Setting Up Your Computer and Workstation
Did you know you can use italics, bold and underlined text in your feedback in GradeMark?
Typing very simple tags (text) either side of the text you would like to format will allow you to change the appearance of the text, e.g:
I know how to <i>put comments in italics</i>
I can put them in <b>bold too</b> or <u>underline</u> them.
Will create text that appears like this:
I know how to put comments in italics
I can put them in bold too or underline them.
Use:
<i>for italics</i>
<b>for bold</b>
<u>for underline</u>
The new schedule of Autumn and Winter 2012 SaGE awareness events is now available for staff to sign up.
These sessions will provide staff with an opportunity to ensure they are familiar with the tools within NILE which will allow students to submit electronically and for them to provide feedback.
The first hour will consist of a presentation and demonstration, with the remaining hour for those staff who wish to stay and try the material on their own modules in NILE or a training module in NILE with the benefit of the Learning Technologist present.
The schedule and link to sign up is shown below:
| Date | Time | Location |
| 17/10 | 10-12 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 24/10 | 10-12 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 24/10 | 2-4 | MB6 – Avenue Campus |
| 31/10 | 2-4 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 7/11 | 2-4 | MB6 – Avenue Campus |
| 8/11 | 10-12 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 15/11 | 10-12 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 21/11 | 2-4 | MB6 – Avenue Campus |
| 29/11 | 2-4 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
| 4/12 | 2-4 | Tpod – Park Campus Library |
Signup using the link below:
http://www.doodle.com/qi6hauaq685ac4t9
If staff wish to have bespoke training then contact the Learning Technology Team on ext 2696 or via email at LTSupport@northampton.ac.uk.
Staff who wish to feedback on the SaGE process generally should use the comments feature on the link below:
http://blogs.northampton.ac.uk/sage/2012/06/22/moving-forward-with-sage/
Tagged with: Training
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