Harvey Mellar

This paper explores the ways in which information about course pedagogy has been represented to potential students through national descriptors and specifications such as the United Kingdom’s Key Information Set. It examines the extent to which such descriptors provide helpful information about pedagogy, for example innovative uses of technology. The paper starts by exploring the wider context within which these descriptors have been developed, including a comparison of similar descriptions internationally. This is followed by a comparative analysis, in which two courses (one single honours undergraduate degree, one Massive Open Online Course) are classified and compared. This serves to illustrate the blind spots in classifications such as the Key Information Set. The paper concludes by arguing that further work is needed to develop classification schemes that both address explicitly the interests of potential students and are able to represent the pedagogic decisions that differentiate teaching in contemporary higher education.

This chapter presents findings from the JISC funded project ‘Scoping a vision for formative e-assessment’ (FEASST). The project was motivated by the increasing recognition of the importance of formative assessment and the need to identify effective strategies for incorporating it into e-learning. This chapter is particularly interested in the human-centric, social dimensions of e-assessment. The project used the participatory pattern methodology to engage a group of practitioners in developing case studies of formative e-assessment across a range of settings (from Primary to Higher Education) through a series of Practical Enquiry Days. Next, the design patterns were extracted from these cases and the outcomes were analysed against the literature. Patterns were subjected to the scrutiny of a group of software developers who used them as the basis for pedagogical and technical scenarios of use. Finally, the case studies and the design patterns were mapped to a domain map. This chapter provides an overview of the project and highlights an illustrative number of patterns.

This article presents key findings from a Joint Information Systems Committee‐funded project, which aimed to identify existing practices where technologies contribute to formative assessment and identify processes that take place around formative assessment where technologies play a significant role. Using a design pattern methodology, the project developed a range of cases of formative e‐assessment with practitioners across a variety of settings through a series of participant workshops. From a selection of these cases, we identified key elements in how practitioners described the problems and solutions they addressed regarding assessment in relation to learning within their different contexts. The patterns were analysed to highlight aspects of them, which are considered critical in theoretical analyses of formative assessment. We provide an overview of the project and discuss an illustrative case and pattern, followed by an analysis which suggests the particular contribution of technologies to formative assessment. Ultimately, for assessment to have formative effects, tutors and students can be identified as appropriating both social and technological resources in learning situations and engaging with both to learn how to take control over learning experiences.

Purpose – This paper reports on an empirical study exploring the way in which campus-based higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK apply their internal quality assurance and enhancement (QA/QE) procedures to their e-learning courses. The purpose of this paper is to identify those characteristics of e-learning courses which affected the capacity of these procedures to assure and enhance the quality of courses. Design/methodology/approach – A case study approach is selected as most appropriate for an in-depth examination of the features of the courses as well as the way in which the procedures are applied. Two sets of data are collected and analysed from each of four e-learning courses: QA documentation and interviews with stakeholders. Findings – It is found that the main factors impacting on the effectiveness of the QA procedures are: the organisational position that these courses had within their institutions; the distributed configuration of course, teams; the disaggregated processes that characterise e-learning courses; and the distant location of students. These factors are found to be impacting on the potential of the QA/QE procedures to enhance the quality of the courses. Practical implications – These case studies highlight the need for campus-based universities to reassess their approach to the QA/QE of e-learning courses, and identify the challenges that course teams face in moving on from the application of QA procedures to addressing the issues of QE. Originality/value – The originality of this paper lies in its analysis of empirical data about the application of QA/QE procedures in e-learning courses in higher education.