Providing the right feedback to the right students: applying an innovative e-Assessment system in engineering education

Background: Formative assessment is regarded as a central element to student learning. Through formative assessment, students are expecting to receive feedback that is supportive, timely and specific. However the marking of assignments brings significant workload to lecturers or tutors, especially for classes with larger cohorts. Moreover educators are often required to cope with the increased number of students with fixed resources.

Purpose: The purpose of this project was to identify the top, the medium, and the poorly performed students in a cohort by applying an innovative assessment approach, so that a lecturer could spend more time with those students who need more help. As a result, the marking load is reduced while the quality of learning and teaching is improved.

Design/Method: A computer assisted assessment program, eTutor, was applied to the formative assessment. The program allowed resubmission of assignment answers so that errors could be corrected by students. Submitted answers were marked automatically so that the marking load was reduced. Students’ performances were identified by examining the grades and the number of submission times. The effectiveness of the project on learning was verified through student evaluation.

Results: Results showed that the top students in the class were satisfied by receiving a praise comment given by the program during automatic marking. Those poorly performed students were motivated to actively seek assistance and feedback. The eTutor program was successful in reducing the marking load, in enhancing students’ learning interest and in achieving a low failure rate in a subject.

Conclusions: The eTutor program was efficient in stimulating students' learning interests, minimising plagiarism and reducing educators’ marking load. It helped students find their weakness and enhanced their learning experience.