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Academic Technology

#61 - Create an Excel-based marking grid that all markers can share

  1. Authentic assessment techniques often require us to assess a broad range of student actions, capabilities and competencies, evidenced across a body of work (for example, in an e-portfolio).
  2. We need to do this in a systematic, structured, fair, efficient and manageable way.
  3. Using Excel in Teams provides a way in which we can do this and allow colleagues to collaborate on entering marks.

Category: Assessment feedback module review Assess students track progress and record achievements

Enhancement goals addressed: Teaching quality | Teaching at scale | Efficient learning management | Authentic assessment

Tools and how to get support: Microsoft Teams | Office 365

Solution overview

Marking grids, or matrices, are a good way of simplifying complex assessment tasks - for example, when assessing coursework for a set of competencies. This process can be standardised by creating a marking scheme in Excel, with grade-indicating statements for each competency. We can also give each competency a marks weighting, so that each contributes differently to the overall mark. We may then create a separate sheet on the spreadsheet for entering marks for each student, and use formulas for calculating the overall mark following the weightings. This may all be done collaboratively, with more than one marker entering data simultaneously, if we share the spreadsheet with the team using Microsoft Teams.

Process
  1. Check to see if you already have Teams installed on your computer. If not, the simplest way to get it is to open Outlook web mail in your web browser, and look for Teams in the App Launcher (top left of the page). Follow the instructions. You can also use Teams in Apple, Android and Microsoft mobile devices.
  2. Create a new private team for your teaching-team, and add your colleagues as members - you can add people from outside (for example, external examiners).
  3. You can create and share a link that takes the members directly into the team.
  4. You can start conversations with team members (type @ in the message box to choose to notify individuals or the whole team). Instant notifications are sent to the people you mention in conversations using this mechanism.
  5. Upload your Excel file to the team's Files space to begin collaborating with it.
  6. Teams has many other great features for collaboration, follow the link in the tools section below for more information.
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