LOUISA Academic and Professional Service User groups June 2025
In June, we hosted the third LOUISA Professional Services User Group (PSUG) and LOUISA Academic User Group (AUG) meetings of the 2024/25 academic year. The meetings focused on two topics – streamlining the assessment workflow for staff and students by reducing our reliance on third party tools such as Turnitin Feedback Studio, as well as how University policy is interpreted when using learning technology for assessment and feedback.
As usual, the session began by recapping the previous meeting and demonstrating how feedback from all our stakeholders has shaped the project to date. A presentation of three workflows – one for each submission type: essay, group and media – was given. This was a significant milestone in the project as these will be the workflows being tested in semester 1 25/26 by our early adopters.
The second part of the session involved group discussions around the themes, with the project team on hand to gather feedback, note current practise and unpick some of the complexities shared.
Discussions kicked off by delving into the new Turnitin Integration.The Turnitin integration with Learn assignments allows instructors to use Turnitin’s similarity checker within a Learn assignment – a more efficient workflow than currently having to do this separately within Turnitin. The groups discussed the impact that not having to switch between Learn and Turnitin (a good thing!) had and the reduction it had on our reliance on Turnitin Feedback Studio. Colleagues highlighted that from a student’s perspective, not using Turnitin Feedback Studio, and getting feedback within Learn should improve their experience by providing a more streamlined approach across their courses for getting feedback.
The second part of discussions focused on the interpretation and application of university policies when using learning technology. Given the diverse operational scales across the university, discrepancies in policy application aren’t surprising but are an area to be addressed.
Anonymity emerged as an area where policy was applied differently across the University. The discussion highlighted specific challenges in maintaining anonymity, especially concerning external markers, very late submissions, and submissions on behalf of others. Discussions around turnaround times for marking were highlighted as a priority concern by both academic and professional services colleagues. Discrepancies in how provisional and final grades are released—particularly the timing and consistency of this release—were noted to potentially impact student satisfaction and perceptions of fairness. The project team have taken away this feedback to discuss if guidance could be put in place to improve this and what this would entail.
Tracking the turnaround time of submissions was highlighted as a very time intensive process for the teaching offices, and colleagues shared experiences of how this had a knock-on effect to the time spent on other areas of the marking process.
Thanks to all who came along – this type of feedback is essential to achieve the LOUISA project’s vision.
As LOUISA moves into its second year of activity, we are excited that the Early Adopter Programme has kicked off with training underway in advance of Semester 1. Participants will be testing, feeding back on, and shaping the LOUISA workflows when it comes to setting up various types of assessments.
For more information about the LOUISA project visit the dedicated SharePoint page.
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