Reflections on the LOUISA Project User Groups
Attending the first round of the Academic User Group (AUG) and Professional Services User Group (PSUG) meetings in late 2024 was a fantastic opportunity to connect with colleagues across disciplines, Schools, and Colleges. As a Learning Technologist, collaborating on assessment (re)design is a key part of my role, and these sessions provided valuable insights into assessment and feedback practices across the university.
A recurring theme in our discussions was that many challenges we face are shared across disciplines and are platform-agnostic. Regardless of the tool – whether Learn, Turnitin, WebPA, PebblePad, STACK, Gradescope, or others – colleagues reported similar struggles with anonymised dropboxes, marks and feedback release, multimedia assignments, peer feedback, moderation, and managing extensions and exceptional circumstances. Group assignments emerged as another shared concern, particularly around fairness in contribution and assessment, as well as the lack of an integrated space for collaborative projects.
Several colleagues expressed a desire to implement innovative approaches to assessment design – for example through multimedia submissions, open-ended tasks, or in-person assessments – but acknowledged the additional time and resources this would require. For me, this resonated with a key aim of the LOUISA project: to establish consistent and streamlined workflows and guidance for core assessment types, reducing the administrative workload involved and enabling colleagues to prioritise authentic assessment tasks and high-quality feedback.
Operating as we do within our individual schools and colleges, it was reassuring to find common ground in our challenges and concerns, and I appreciated the opportunity for open discussion, sharing good practice and identifying areas for improvement. I’m looking forward to our next sessions, where we’ll focus on marking, feedback, and the potential role of rubrics in enhancing assessment.
Jamie Auld Smith
Learning Technologist
Centre for Open Learning | Moray House School of Education and Sport
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