Abstract
Graide is an assessment and feedback platform designed to speed up grading and improve the consistency and quality of feedback. It uses technology to automate administrative tasks and optionally uses artificial intelligence to reduce repetition when giving feedback.
This case study looks at the PDF grading usage in the 21/22 academic year at the University of Birmingham in the Physics & Astronomy, Engineering, Materials and Metallurgy, and Foundation Year departments.
46 staff and post graduate teaching assistants used Graide during the pilot, 31 participated in the survey and headline statistics from the pilot are below:
- Median amount of feedback given to assignment: 55.3 words
- Median amount of time taken to grade assignments: 5.3 mins
- 22532 Questions graded in the data set.
- 10197 (45.3%) Questions graded in 0-14 seconds.
- 6873 (30.5%) Questions graded on 0-6 seconds
- 254,620 words of feedback given
- 20,794 words of feedback typed (12.2x utilisation)
- 46 staff have used Graide to mark work (31 participated in the survey)
- Compared to existing systems:
- 80% find it is easier to give consistent feedback
- 71% find it easier to give high quality feedback
- 58% say it is easier for students to attend to and receive feedback, the rest say is the same
- 90% find it faster
- Graide has shown 53% reduction in grading times on average.
- 94% of users want to continue using Graide.
Introduction
Marking and feedback are an integral part of higher education. Yet this component causes stress on educators, takes up a significant amount of time, and leaves students unsatisfied.
University of Birmingham post graduates are hired for 11.2 mins of grading per script on medium length assessments. This can be two to three times longer for exams or coursework. In addition to this, marks for each question have to be summed and often transferred to university systems. This can add an additional minute or more per student and is prone to errors. Finally this is reflected in the National Student Survey scores. The assessment and feedback category is systemically the lowest scoring “education delivery” category in most universities across the country.
Graide is a spin out by University of Birmingham postgraduate students, designed to directly address these issues.
In the rest of this case study we will introduce Graide and its functionality, define success for this pilot, describe the methodology for measuring against the criteria, and show the results from this pilot.
What is Graide
Graide is an end-to-end assessment and feedback platform for STEM. It lets you build assignments in minutes that you can deliver digitally or on paper.
Administrative benefits of Graide include:
- Automatic mark summation
- Automatic mark upload into the gradebook
- Automatic distribution of grading to multiple markers
- Instant feedback release to students when desired
- Anonymous marking
- The use of optical character recognition and handwriting recognition when creating questions or submitting answers as a student
Grading benefits of Graide include:
- A shared rubric between graders to improve consistency
- Rubric management system - rearranging and grouping feedback with optional restrictions to avoid accidental errors
- Feedback directly on the student answer
- Retroactive editing of feedback and grades in one place to ensure consistency of feedback between students
- AI suggestions based on previously graded questions (only on digital submissions)
Examples of the grading interface for both PDF and digital answer are below.
AI suggestions are based on an assistive workflow, where suggestions are based on previously graded questions for one particular question at a time.
Defining Success
The University of Birmingham wanted to improve assessment and feedback in a variety of areas. They defined success by the following metrics that, when put together, make a meaningful impact on assessment and feedback:
- Meaningful speed up of the grading process
- Increase in consistency of feedback
- Increase or maintenance of quality / quantity of feedback
- Improvements or maintenance of ability to receive and attend to their feedback
- A useable platform that is easy to learn
Methodology
As we did not have access to historical data to compare specific instances of times, we were led by user surveys and data analytics from system usage.
User Surveys
Users are surveyed of their opinions in two sections:
- Comparing Graide to other marking systems they have used (e.g. on paper or Canvas SpeedGrader)
- Usability of Graide as a platform
In section one we ask the following questions with the corresponding definitions:
Consistent feedback is when answers with the same method get the same marks and feedback, in order to be fair to students.
High-quality feedback is when: enough is provided and in enough detail; it focuses on students’ performance/learning/actions, rather than them or their characteristics; it is timely (received while it still matters and in time for further learning/assistance); it is appropriate to the assignment's criteria for success; it is related to students’ understanding of what they are supposed to be doing.
- How would you compare the ease of providing consistent feedback?
- How would you compare the ease of giving high-quality feedback?
- How would you compare the ability for students to receive and attend to their feedback?
- How would you compare the speed of marking?
Each question was a multiple choice indicating the following set of changes:
- Graide was significantly (characteristic improvement verb) than other marking systems.
- Graide was slightly (characteristic improvement verb) than other marking systems.
- Graide was the same (characteristic verb) than other marking systems.
- Graide was significantly (characteristic deterioration verb) than other marking systems.
- Graide was significantly (characteristic deterioration verb) than other marking systems.
E.g. faster / slower, easier / harder.
In the next section we asked users to select to what degree they agree/disagree with the following statements. Where 1 - strongly disagree, 2 - disagree, 3 - neutral, 4 - agree, 5 strongly agree.
- It was easy to learn how to create and deliver assignments from scratch on Graide.
- Once learned, it was easy to create and deliver assignments from scratch on Graide.
- It was easy to navigate around Graide to find what I needed.
- I quickly became familiar with the marking interface.
- Once familiar with it, the marking interface was easy to use.
- The marking interface met my needs.
- Students could easily upload their answers.
- Students could easily view their feedback.
Data analytics from the system usage
In addition to user surveys we have analysed data from the usage of Graide. This includes:
- An estimate of the amount of time to grade work
- The amount of feedback given to each submission
- The amount of handwriting repetition we were able to remove
When each question is loaded into the grading interface the time is logged and when the marking is submitted the time is also logged. This allows us to estimate the time taken to grade the question. This cannot take into account breaks taken by the user and hence is an estimate.
As the feedback is digital we can count the words of feedback given to the student submissions. As feedback often involves mathematical symbols, a “word” is defined as a string of characters separated by a space.
Additionally, as the rubric is being used we can count the words of feedback within a rubric and calculate the reduction of repetition.
Results
In this section we see that the user survey indicates Graide hits the success criteria set out in the previous section. Users found that Graide:
- Made a meaningful speed up of the grading process (51% significantly, 39% slightly)
- Easier to give consistent feedback (51% significantly, 29% slightly)
- Easier to give high quantity feedback (39% significantly, 32% slightly)
- Easier for students to receive and attend to their feedback (23% significantly, 35% slightly, 42% same)
- A useable platform that is easy to learn (45% strongly agree, 39% agree, 14% neutral)
Whilst analysing the data from system usage we found that:
- Median amount of feedback given to assignment: 55.3 words
- Median amount of time taken to grade assignments: 5.3 mins
- 22532 Questions graded in the data set.
- 10197 (45.3%) Questions graded in 0-14 seconds.
- 6873 (30.5%) Questions graded on 0-6 seconds
- 254,620 words of feedback given
- 20,794 words of feedback typed (12.2x utilisation)
Additionally 94% of users want to continue using Graide.
User Surveys
46 staff have used Graide to mark work, and 31 participated in the survey. Any comparisons are to existing systems such as Canvas SpeedGrader or grading work on paper.
System Marking Time Analysis
You can see a histogram of the time taken to grade all questions in the data set below. There is a long tail but a significant amount of the distribution is in the shorter amounts of time.
Average amount of time(mins) to grade an assignment.
Each row represents a unique assignment which has been redacted for confidentiality.
Average amount of feedback (words) on an assignment
Each row represents a unique assignment which has been redacted for confidentiality.
Conclusion
Graide is a platform designed to alleviate the pains associated with assessment and feedback. It does this in three ways:
- Improving oversight and removing bottlenecks in the process
- Using technology to remove administrative tasks, improve consistency and quantity of feedback, speed up grading
- Using artificial intelligence to reduce workload at scale
The purpose of this pilot was to assess whether these claims are applicable to the assessment and feedback processes in certain university of Birmingham departments.
After being tested by 46 staff in 16 modules to grade 38 assignments (22532 questions), we found that Graide
- Meaningfully speeding up the grading process
- Increased the quality, quantity, and consistency of feedback
- Made it easier for students to receive and attend to their feedback
- Is a generally easy to use platform
