Embedding digital scholarship requires academic leadership

I am just really pleased with the way my little group of BSc students have risen to the challenge of submitting a "first 500 words on Evidence-based practice" to peermark. They are very lacking in confidence and find academic work thoroughly alien to their world of clinical expertise. It is a real joy and privilege to share a room with these guys as they open up about the challenges of embodied knowledge practice and the extreme skill that they deploy on a daily basis. But now they have to do knowledge work of a scholarly kind, and very often that is 'digital scholarship'. As module leader, I'm bringing them on in small steps and they're responding famously (we argue about whether these are 'small' steps :). As far as why this is happening, Glover et al's recent paper points back in my direction...

However, the overarching theme evident from the interviews was that the preference of the module leader is the main driver of the use of technology in submission and feedback, even when they will be taking little part in the process.

Any success I'm reporting here is not intended as a cheap boast. For me it highlights the necessary agency of academics to set the direction and expectations for what happens in terms of embedding digital literacy practices into the fabric of core learning and teaching activity. Something too many shy away from. Perhaps there is an analogy with children and the significance of their birth parents. No para-academic (e.g. learning technologist, librarian, administrator) can carry exactly the same weight of authority. We're living in times with earnest attempts to apply a 'division of labour' to university activities with the promise of more student centredness, maximising consistency, increasing efficiency and driving down costs. Whether or not these are worthy and entirely necessary goals in a time of 'austerity', we should consider whether tweaking the academic out of higher education may leave us with something other than 'higher education'. Is that what we want and who decides? For my part, I'll do what I can to help my students develop current scholarly practices and habits, many of which will incur 'the digital'.

GLOVER, Ian et al. Making connections: technological interventions to support students in using, and tutors in creating, assessment feedback. Research in Learning Technology, [S.l.], v. 23, oct. 2015. ISSN 2156-7077. Available at: <http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/27078>. Date accessed: 29 Oct. 2015. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v23.27078.

Yes Peermark

Since my involvement with the Evidence Based Practice theme for the new Bachelor of Nursing began I have been disappointed that we've been pretty conservative with some of our assignments. But I now think there is a serious danger of missed opportunity here when we could do something more innovative and engaging, better for students and staff.
I'm thinking of http://submit.ac.uk/en_gb/products/peermark
We already have this at Cardiff University, it is an extension of Grademark and Turnitin. We are in process of rolling Grademark out to all our programmes following the biggest UK pilot of the system. I want students to anonymously mark one (or more) their peers' assignments, with a right of appeal to the academic who would normally perform the 1st marker role. I am asking for this because, for the first time in about ten years, I have been engaged in 'proper' marking (for our PGCE programme). You probably think I want to avoid the task. Actually I have realised again what a powerfully generative learning experience it is. I find myself incredibly motivated to check my own understanding, root about in the literature, and come to a conclusion I feel I can defend. This is why markers are able to stay current with the topic they teach and assess. It seems immoral we should continue to keep all that intrinsic motivation to ourselves. Since we have already adopted Grademark, Peermark is within easy reach. If we can find a way to do this for merely the students' first assignment, we should.
The workflow would only need to be adjusted slightly. Bring the deadline for submission a week forward, giving students a week to mark one of their peers papers. Peermark has a sophisticated answer to the issue of non-engagement by the students (see their FAQs):

Reviews written for papers in a PeerMark assignment can be graded after the PeerMark assignment's due date. To grade an individual review click on "Edit Grades" at the expanded student's list of reviews. Then enter a score on a scale of 0-10 for the individual review. The average score (as a percentage) for all the reviews a student has written will be calculated and applied to the total point value for the assignment (e.g. if a student was assigned two reviews and received a 5/10 for one review and a 7/10 for the second review, the student would receive 60% of the total points possible for the assignment as a default final grade). Click "Save Grades" to save the review scores that have been entered. To edit the final grade for a student's PeerMark assignment after entering grades for individual reviews, enter the preferred score in the Grade column to the right of the student's name before clicking "Save Grades".

University of Glamorgan have been here already (of course!): see this poster. I love the quote, 'sometimes I feel I do not have enough knowledge to mark my mates'. That is the critical moment of realisation which should prompt the individual into active learning. It is not a negative, as presented in the findings, but a major positive.