An Initial Survey on Student Attitudes toward Working with Marked Examples in the E-learning Context

Formative assessment plays an essential role in helping students to gain deeper understanding of their subject areas. Implementing formative assessment in an e-learning environment by working with samples of marked student work provides an innovative approach of teaching and learning. A learning exercise of the implementation of learning from marked student work in an e-learning environment was conducted with second year software engineering students. The exercise was based around examples of marked student work and involved a four-step process. As an initial step to evaluate the effectiveness of learning from marking student work, a survey was conducted. It obtained information on the level of student participation, perceptions on contribution to student learning and attitudes to an interactive learning process. The results suggested that the level of participation in the learning exercise is fairly high and the perception on learning benefits is very positive. Students welcome and appreciate the opportunity to receive feedback on their own work. These results have encouraged us to continue the work with marked examples of student work and to proceed towards a more interactive learning process that facilitates peer-feedback and discussion.