Blog post – Inspera Assessment uplift case study

ACCT1101 Accounting for Decision Making piloted Inspera Assessment in 2022 and delighted in the digital assessment experience.

This course is taken by approximately 350 students each semester, of which half are international. Automatic marking and the creation of an interactive assessment were key benefits. The fourth semester of this assessment being offered in Inspera saw a new course coordinator for the course, Elizabeth Marsland, who was new to UQ and new to Inspera. Elizabeth was keen to use Inspera as the assessment tool, but was concerned about her lack of knowledge, the assessment usability for students and academic integrity. Working closely with Learning Designer Tanya Henry, a number of small but effective changes were made to the assessment that resulted in significantly reduced student emails about the assessment and increased student usability of the assessment. 

Re-designing assessment using Inspera

The case study (stimulus) that the assessment is based on was adjusted to ensure it mirrored the learning outcomes. The structure of the assessment within Inspera was addressed to ensure it was user-friendly for both students and staff. Tanya restructured the assessment to include a content page, and student instructions to ensure students knew how to effectively use Inspera which enabled students to access assessment data at key points throughout the task without the need for multiple screens or page scrolling. The assessment questions were reordered and grouped together, given meaningful names for enhanced student familiarisation with unit content. The questions were numbered in a meaningful way to provide assessment structure. All questions were labelled with the course code, question title and assessment title to enable ease of searching for questions in future course offerings. The assessment was peer-reviewed to identify any potential issues prior to the assessment being released to students.

Academic integrity was addressed with the adjustment of all financial figures and the addition of a series of randomised questions. AssignmentWatch was used to identify integrity concerns on the Chegg.com website. Within 24 hours notifications were emailed about matches on Chegg for this assessment. A UQ-authorised request was sent to Chegg requesting the content be removed which was actioned by Chegg.

Questions asked by students regarding this assessment in the previous semester were reviewed and it was identified that many of the questions asked were the result of settings selected when the assessment was set up. Settings for this semester’s assessment were selected to ensure students and graders could access and interact with the assessment in the required way. This reduced the number of access questions from 101 to 7.

Outcomes

During the 3-week assessment period, Elizabeth commented that Inspera “was a dream” and students commented how much they enjoyed using Inspera. Sebastian Smith (student) said he “loved using Inspera as an assessment tool as it was not overwhelming, easy to use and functioned well”. Other outcomes from this assessment included:

• Reduction in student questions regarding assessment content by 50% (28 emails last semester and 16 emails this semester). This change in the number of questions and type of questions asked showed that students understood the assessment content and requirements more this semester. 
• Students openly, and unprompted, saying how much they enjoyed using Inspera as an assessment tool and the learning opportunities it provided.
• Many students finished the assessment within the first week (3 weeks were allocated for the assessment).
• Increased student success. In Semester 1 2022 28 students (6%) failed this assessment. Only 15 students (4%) failed the assessment in Semester 2 2022.
• Students who failed the assessment and unit last semester, who worked on this assessment again this semester, said that this semester’s assessment was much more streamlined and easier to understand and interact with. 
• Students did not encounter any technical issues. 
• Grading was streamlined and tutors felt it worked much better this semester, with reduced time. Tutors felt this was thanks to support and training offered by eLearning.
• No queries were raised by students on either the Discussion Board or by email to query their assignment grade or seek further feedback on their assessment based on the comments provided.

Future/possible developments

The first instance of this assessment was great, but with a few well-considered changes, the assessment rose to the next level and provided an authentic and effective assessment and learning opportunity. The team is now looking at further improving the Inspera assessment by:

• introducing a driven and identified strategy for extensions
• including word limits for each of the sections so that expectations are clear for the student and that marking can be streamlined
• using naming conventions in the assessment title for ease of searching for all stakeholders
• changing the submission date and time to ensure students have AskUs support if needed
• including the assessment rubric in the Inspera marking scheme.

If you have any questions regarding this case study, please contact the authors, Tanya Henry and Elizabeth Marsland.

Visit the Inspera Assessment page to find information, resources and support.