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In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic the higher education sector, in the United Kingdom and internationally, transitioned to online assessment, at a speed and scale which might have been unimaginable under normal circumstances. The priority in the sector was to ensure that fundamental principles of assessment, including integrity, were supported in the implementation of changes and no student was disadvantaged in accessing digital learning opportunities, when they were assessed. The paper focuses on a project that evaluated this transition and provided the opportunity to understand emergent approaches to assessment. It explores the transition from the perspective of the experience of the stakeholders that have been affected, primarily students and staff. It identifies processes and formats of assessment that worked efficiently and examines the implications for future practice in distance learning environments and for the sector.

In 2020, the Higher Education sector, in the UK and internationally, had to move to online assessment because of the Covid-19 pandemic, at a speed and scale which might have been unimaginable under normal circumstances. By upscaling and accelerating the adoption of digital assessment practices in distance and online education across the world, educators had to rethink assessment processes to make sure they were an integral part of the authentic digital life experience for students and staff. As these changes appear to be far from temporary, they have accelerated the transition to a “new normal” regime of assessing students online for the foreseeable future. The priority in the sector is that fundamental principles of assessment including integrity and authenticity are supported in the design and implementation of assessments. In addition ensuring that no student is disadvantaged in accessing digital learning opportunities, when they are assessed. The paper discusses a project that collected data about three final assessment routes students have taken. The aim was to generate understanding of this transition to online assessment, primarily from the perspective of the experience of the students who have been affected. Our findings explore student agreement with this transition to online assessment and provide an opportunity to understand student approaches to assessment and what they would like to see in future assessments. Finally we explore the implications for practice in distance learning and campus based environments and for the sector.

This article examines the design process required for developing assessments within blended learning scenarios. Furthermore, we examine how practitioners in higher education can be supported to develop their understanding of assessment and how to design assessments into their teaching.

Educating students in the discipline of digital art to a professional standard has generally proven difficult. In an effort to understand the problem, a first-year undergraduate modelling course cohort was observed. Some students in this course progressed from being novices to acquiring proficiency during the nine-week term of the course. Computer Graphics (CG) modelling professionals evaluated student work to confirm their progress. Traditional models of proficiency development expect that proficiency is dependent on the investment of significant time on discipline- related tasks. The results of this investigation show that the transition from a novice level of understanding to that of proficiency can be rapid. Earlier models emphasize the importance of long-term memory and pattern-matching to developing proficiency. For the field of digital art, data gathered in this study do not support long-term memory or pattern matching as a principal contributing factor to the development of proficiency. Instead, it suggests that knowledge of what a professional standard is, in combination with important threshold concepts, leads to proficiency.

Introduction: Games involving technology have the potential to enhance hand-eye coordination and decision-making skills. As a result, game characteristics have been applied to education and training, where they are known as serious games. There is an increase in the volume of literature on serious games in healthcare education; however, evidence on their impact is still ambiguous. \ud Aims: The aims of this study were (1), to identify high-quality evidence (systematic reviews or meta-analyses) regarding impacts of serious games on healthcare education; and (2), to explore evidence regarding impacts of serious games in dental education. \ud Methods: A rapid review of the literature was undertaken to synthesise available evidence and examine serious games in healthcare education (Stage 1) and dental education (Stage 2). \ud Results: Nine systematic reviews were included in Stage 1, four of which were of high, three of moderate, and two of low quality. For Stage 2, two randomised control trials with moderate quality were included. The findings demonstrated that serious games are potentially effective learning tools in terms of knowledge and skills improvement, although outcomes of serious games over traditional learning approaches were not consistent. In addition, serious games appeared to be more engaging and satisfying for students, which could be considered as the most important positive impact.\ud Conclusion: Serious games provide an option for healthcare and dental education but remain under-utilised and researched. At best, they offer a similar experience to other methods in relation to educational outcome; however, they can provide a supplementary strategy to engage students and improve learner satisfaction.

Blended Learning should be a deliberately-designed and pedagogically-informed endeavour. Blended Learning integrates (blends) face-to-face learning environments with online learning environments so that learning can occur anyplace and anytime and can transcend the physical boundaries of traditional face-to-face settings. Moving towards successful blended learning does not happen by chance. It requires educational leadership and a supportive change management strategy. Such a strategy should include a vision for innovation, plans for diffusing the innovations and the provision of advice and guidance to faculty and administrators. The chapter offers examples of what is possible through the genre of ‘Cluster Scenarios' and explores some implications for adopting a blended learning strategy for faculty and administrators.

Background: Social media can support and sustain communities much better than previous generations of learning technologies, where institutional barriers undermined any initiatives for embedding formal and informal learning. Some of the many types of social media have already had an impact on student learning, based on empirical evidence. One of these, social networking, has the potential to support communication in formal and informal spaces.Objective: In this paper we report on the evaluation of an institutional social network—King's Social Harmonisation Project (KINSHIP)—established to foster an improved sense of community, enhance communication, and serve as a space to model digital professionalism for students at King’s College London, United Kingdom.Methods: Our evaluation focused on a study that examined students’ needs and perceptions with regard to the provision of a cross-university platform. Data were collected from students, including those in the field of health and social care, in order to recommend a practical way forward to address current needs in this area.Results: The findings indicate that the majority of the respondents were positive about using a social networking platform to develop their professional voice and profiles. Results suggest that timely promotion of the platform, emphasis on interface and learning design, and a clear identity are required in order to gain acceptance as the institutional social networking site.Conclusions: Empirical findings in this study project an advantage of an institutional social network such a KINSHIP over other social networks (eg, Facebook) because access is limited to staff and students and the site is mainly being used for academic purposes.

The paper explores the relationship between formative assessment and social software. Formative assessment practices though beneficial for student learning become marginalised and constrained in open and distance learning environments in higher education. Feedback is a key factor in formative assessment and learners can benefit from the deployment of emerging technologies and the opportunities for participation and dialogue afforded by social software. This paper explores and proposes a conceptual framework for this relationship. The claim is that the social dimensions of emerging technologies – specifically, blogs and wikis – allow for formative assessment practices to be re‐invented or at the very least facilitated by essentially participative and student‐focussed interventions. A comparison of these technologies against formative assessment mechanisms identifies the types of processes that these new tools might best support to encourage effective feedback approaches that both empower the learner and en...

Learning design in MOOCs seems to follow particular approaches, as the claim is that the MOOC target audience, a ‘massive’ student body, will require different learning designs from those that work for small student numbers. For instance, ‘traditional’ online courses have a small in size target audience, whereas the MOOC is usually free, offers no accreditation and targets large (massive) audiences. Because, anyone with an Internet connection can enrol, academic staff cannot possibly offer personalised, one - to- one support to students. Consequently, learning design to support self-regulated learning is a significant consideration. To address these issues, MOOC platform developers have looked at how the learning design of the format could scaffold learning in the MOOC space and encourage network formation between more participants to support each other. To achieve this some of the MOOC platforms dictate a more or less rigid template of a learning design, whereas other providers leave the design of the courses up to the individual customer institutions, within broad guidelines. Wherever the MOOC ‘experiment’ takes us, there is still an optimism that results will leave behind a digital trail of good practice to (a) show more clearly what a truly self-regulated learning environment might look like and (b) benefitother forms of formal and/or informal forms of instruction in higher education.The paper explores the learning design characteristics of MOOCs, and particularlythose elements that are essential for independent learning and student support. It assesses whether these are implicit or explicit in the design of MOOCs, and how they are embedded in the MOOC platform. It then explores the value of design patterns as an approach to solving the particular design challenges raised in the paper. Overall, it seems that the premise that guides several debates on how MOOCs work is that we should be spending more time when we design MOOCs to enhance those features that support the self-regulated learner.

The teaching observation process in a higher education context can be underpinned by an intention to enhance learning and teaching or used as a managerial tool to ensure standards are met or maintained. In this article we examine the perceptions of observees using a model that engages educational developers as observers. We seek to examine whether the ‘educational developers as observers’ model actually provides evidence that teaching observations can be developmental and stimulate reflective practice amongst those relatively new to teaching in higher education. The conclusions provide a view of whether teaching observations foster formative notions, such as deepening of understanding, critical reflection and enhancement of teaching practice, via the developmental nature of the scheme, or summative elements focused on measuring quality, which may sometimes result in simply ‘ticking boxes’.

1. Introduction: Approaches to assessment that enhance learning Stylianos Hatzipanagos and Rebecca Rochon 2. Reflections and new directions Paul Black and Robert McCormick 3. From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher education David Nicol 4. The impact of formative feedback on the development of academic writing Ursula Wingate 5. Beyond feedback: developing student capability in complex appraisal D. Royce Sadler 6. Exploring the use of peer assessment as a vehicle for closing the gap between feedback given and feedback used Patricia Cartney 7. A multi-faceted formative assessment approach: better recognising the learning needs of students James O. Jenkins 8. Non-traditional learners in higher education: comparison of a traditional MCQ examination with concept mapping to assess learning in a dental radiological science course David B. Hay, Po Li Tan and Eric Whaites 9. Beginning teacher education and collaborative formative e-assessment Mary Webb 10. Exploring formative e-assessment: using case stories and design patterns Caroline Daly, Norbert Pachler, Yishay Mor and Harvey Mellar 11. Complexity theory - an approach to assessment that can enhance learning and - more generally - could transform university management Lewis Elton

King's College Hospital Dental Nurse Education and Training Centre has recently developed an online course for dental ‘assistants’ in Malaysia. Clare Roberts, Rebecca Carruthers, Dr Stylianos Hatzipanagos and Professors Patricia Reynolds and Margaret Comfort discuss the rationale and implementation of this course.

Portfolios have been used for assessment in higher education as an alternative to exams and assignments. E-portfolios offer staff a digital technology that can be both a personalised learning space, owned and controlled by the learner, and a presentation tool which can be used for formal assessment purposes. However, this can result in a tension between process and product, where e-portfolios become electronic repositories of resources that simply tick boxes for career progression. The paper reports on a project that investigated the use of e-portfolios by teaching practitioners developing a critical portfolio of evidence for an award-bearing academic development programme. An e-portfolio had been adopted to address criticisms that conventional assessment fails to take account of the context in which teaching practitioners operate. The project aimed to enable teaching practitioners to access and gain familiarity with pedagogically sound e-portfolio opportunities. In addition, it aimed to foster a reflective approach, promote critical thinking focused on learning and teaching and enhance continuing professional development.

The chapter reports work that investigated the use of e-portfolios developed by teaching practitioners as part of an award-bearing academic development programme in the UK. The project aimed to enable teaching practitioners to access and gain familiarity with pedagogically sound e-portfolio opportunities. The project was designed to foster a reflective approach, promote critical thinking focused on learning and teaching, and enhance continuing professional development. The outcomes of this project are discussed in terms of an appreciation of e-assessment by the teaching practitioners involved, recommendations for an e-portfolio environment that uses technology enhanced learning resources to foster a reflective approach that can enable and enhance continuous professional development for academic staff.

The framework presented in this article demonstrates strategies for a global approach to e-curricula in dental education by considering a collection of outcome assessment tools. By combining the outcomes for overall assessment, a global model for a pilot project that applies e-assessment tools to virtual learning environments (VLE), including haptics, is presented. Assessment strategies from two projects, HapTEL (Haptics in Technology Enhanced Learning) and UDENTE (Universal Dental E-learning), act as case-user studies that have helped develop the proposed global framework. They incorporate additional assessment tools and include evaluations from questionnaires and stakeholders' focus groups. These measure each of the factors affecting the classical teaching/learning theory framework as defined by Entwistle in a standardized manner. A mathematical combinatorial approach is proposed to join these results together as a global assessment. With the use of haptic-based simulation learning, exercises for tooth preparation assessing enamel and dentine were compared to plastic teeth in manikins. Equivalence for student performance for haptic versus traditional preparation methods was established, thus establishing the validity of the haptic solution for performing these exercises. Further data collected from HapTEL are still being analyzed, and pilots are being conducted to validate the proposed test measures. Initial results have been encouraging, but clearly the need persists to develop additional e-assessment methods for new learning domains.

The concept of communities of practice has been particularly influential in education, particularly in online learning, where it has been adopted enthusiastically. This also applies to social media, where often engagement in online activities is interpreted somewhat uncritically as a set of behaviours and tendencies exhibited by virtual communities of practice. The notion is that social media can facilitate formal and informal learning because they are not content-centred but people-centred, open, and participative. On the other hand if embedding social media within learning set-ups sustains communities of practice that support learning, it is important to explore how and when this happens. The chapter explores the correspondence between the key constituent components of the CoP framework and the attributes of social media that allow claims about formation/sustenance of CoPs.

Electronic information about the individual is derived from what we say about ourselves, shaped by commentary from others and extended through electronic exchanges with both human and computer based intelligent agents.Digital Identity and Social Media will examine the impact of social media and distributed social spaces on our contemporary understandings of digital identity. This book will benefit researchers, practitioners, the wider educational community across all sectors, educational technologists, and individuals who are interested in how social media and emerging technologies will impact formal education and the social implications that surround the reformulation and fluidity of virtual communities. In addition, professionals and researchers working in the field of information and communication technologies and knowledge management in various disciplines will find this title to be an invaluable resource.

Universities wishing to expand their provision beyond their local catchment areas need to consider whether to bring the students to the tuition or take the tuition to the students. Current-day educational and information technologies make the latter option a much more achievable prospect than it has been in the past. Nevertheless, careful consideration needs to be given to the nature of the distance-learning students' learning experiences and the extent to which these may be comparable with those of the local students. These matters are considered in this paper against the background of the Global Campus project whereby Middlesex University's School of Computing Science sought to take its initial steps in distance-learning provision.

E-learning has opened a multitude of possibilities for teaching and learning. As the market matures there is a demand for more effective and cost-efficient learning interventions that meet the learning needs of the diverse learner population. Currently, however, very few teaching attempts have been made to match the pedagogical styles underlying e-learning interventions to students' diverse learning styles. Information and communication technologies can provide a variety of ways for adapting learning environments to students learning styles, although they are not often used to their full potential. In the Global Campus (GC) project at Middlesex University, we studied the differences in the learning styles of our distance and classroom students. We then examined the electronic learning resources and underlying pedagogical approach to establish how effectively they accommodate the diverse learning styles of the students. Finally, we proposed some measures to improve the e-learning environment in a way that matches the students' learning styles more effectively.

This chapter explores how web-based video conferencing (WVC) can be used to create and support learning environments within a work based learning context. Computer mediated communication interactions through WVC can support collaborative knowledge construction by encouraging dialogical processes in communities of learners and practitioners. We position our field of exploration within the educational landscape defined by socio-economic changes, resulting from the development of the knowledge economy, and the explosive growth of information and communication technologies to serve it.

Portfolios have been used for assessment in higher education as an alternative to exams and assignments. E-portfolios offer staff a digital technology that can be both a personalised learning space, owned and controlled by the learner, and a presentation tool which can be used for formal assessment purposes. However, this can result in a tension between process and product, where e-portfolios become electronic repositories of resources that simply tick boxes for career progression. The paper reports on a project that investigated the use of e-portfolios by teaching practitioners developing a critical portfolio of evidence for an award-bearing academic development programme. An e-portfolio had been adopted to address criticisms that conventional assessment fails to take account of the context in which teaching practitioners operate. The project aimed to enable teaching practitioners to access and gain familiarity with pedagogically sound e-portfolio opportunities. In addition, it aimed to foster a reflective approach, promote critical thinking focused on learning and teaching and enhance continuing professional development.

Development of a more scholarly approach to teaching at university may expose the novice university teacher to an apparent conflict in belief systems about teaching and learning (i.e. epistemological beliefs). Educational research is explicit in its recognition of a constructivist framework, whilst other academic research is often embedded more implicitly within an objectivist framework. A reconceptualisation of objectivism and constructivism as complementary philosophies is suggested here as it may help support the evolution of a sophisticated epistemology among teacher/researchers. This supports a learner‐centred teaching approach within higher education without conflicting with deeply held beliefs about academic research. These issues are reported here with reference to informal discussions with graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) registered on a course of teacher development within two UK universities.