LOUISA Benefits for British Sign Language
Some simple changes to assessment processes have made a big difference for the British Sign Language Stage 1 courses in the Centre for Open Learning (COL). By adopting a standardised submission process aligned with LOUISA workflows and reviewing their assessment schedule in collaboration with the teaching office and local learning technology team, course organisers have improved the student experience while making assignments easier to manage and mark.
LOUISA (Learn Optimised User Interface for Submission and Assessment) is an initiative designed to make assessment and feedback in Learn more usable, accessible, inclusive, and consistent across the University. It establishes a small set of clearly defined workflows that integrate core assessment tools with Learn, helping students submit work, receive feedback, and navigate their courses more easily while enabling staff to manage assessment processes more efficiently and share good practice across Schools.
Before implementing the new workflows, the course team took a step back and looked at the current programme of assessment that was undertaken by their students. There were initially eight assessments spread across different types including video, essay and group submissions. However, following reflection, the assessment strategy was restructured into five coherent and purposeful tasks, maintaining a strong emphasis on formative feedback to support student development. While not part of the LOUISA workflows, this change provided an opportunity to undertake a constructive review of the student provision.
As part of the refined assessment programme, three media assignments were required, one of which was a presentation.
In previous years, these assessments were filmed in class by students, after which files were given to instructors to upload to a Dropbox outside of Learn.
This process was often complicated by the range of file types produced by students. By moving to the LOUISA media submission workflow, students now upload their videos to Media Hopper Create and submit directly in Learn. This standardised approach simplifies submission and ensures markers can easily access and review recordings, while eliminating file compatibility issues. Course Administrators also highlighted that the new workflow makes moderation by External Examiners in particular much more straightforward, as submissions, marks, and feedback are all available in one place.
Previously, External Examiners required separate access to a SharePoint folder to view video submissions and had to be directed elsewhere to access marks and feedback. Now, they can access everything directly within the Learn assignment dropbox, streamlining the moderation process and improving efficiency.
The use of Media Hopper Create to host videos brings additional benefits, including fewer technical issues related to large files and playback, improved accessibility through automated captions and transcripts, better performance through adaptive streaming, and reduced storage costs to support more sustainable use of University systems.
Another assessment type that benefited from the LOUISA workflows was the course’s dialogue submissions. This involved pairs of students recording a signed conversation, which was then submitted as a video.
Under the previous process, both students in each pair were required to upload individually. This created unnecessary duplication and significant administrative overhead, as staff then had to manually identify and regroup pairs for marking after submission.
By making use of Learn’s group submission the course team were able to assign the groups ahead of time and then one of the students would be responsible for submitting on behalf of the group. Whilst the ability to mark group submissions with rubrics works well in many cases it should be noted that it doesn’t currently allow you to assign different marks and feedback to individual students and this has to be done manually, though the course team were able to develop a workflow for this.
A key factor in the course’s successful implementation of the streamlined workflows was the effort made by the teaching team to prepare students for the change. They updated student guidance to clearly explain how to upload media to Media Hopper Create ahead of the deadline and submit it as an assignment using the Media Hopper Create Embed LTI tool.
Another benefit for students using Media Hopper Create, rather than uploading media directly to Learn, is the ability to act as co-creators of shared content rather than having a single group member “own” the file. This supports collaborative working by reinforcing shared responsibility for completing and submitting assessments on time, while encouraging peer support throughout the process. It also highlights the importance of clear communication within groups, particularly when one student is submitting on behalf of others.
These improvements will be taken forward by the team, with key learnings incorporated into guidance developed by the LOUISA project. This will support other courses looking to streamline and optimise their administration of assessment and feedback in Learn.
Overall, these changes have been highly successful, enabling the course team to spend less time on administrative tasks and troubleshooting, and more time focusing on marking and providing feedback on student work.
A special thank you to Carri Neilson, Jamie Auld Smith and Lou Hanson for discussing their work with us to create this case study.
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