About 10 days ago, I took part in a very interesting workshop about the use of assessment tools to promote learning:
Self-assessment: strategies and software to stimulate learning
The day was organised by Sally Jordan from the OU, and Tony Gardner-Medwin from UCL, and supported by the HEA, so thanks to all of them for making it happen.
People talked about different assessment tools (not all Moodle), how they were getting students to use them, and in some cases what evidence there was for whether that was effective.
Parts of the event were recorded, and you can now access the recordings at http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?whichevent=1955&s=1. There is a total of 3.5 hours of video there, so you may not want to watch it all. My presentation is in Part 3, which also includes the final discussion, all in 30 minutes, and provides a reasonable summary of the day.
Despite having spent the whole day at the event, and discussed various aspects of what self-assessment is, I don't think we reached a single definition for what is self-assessment. Actually, I think it is clear that it is not one thing, but it is a useful way of looking at many different things, from the point of view of what is the most useful thing to help students learn.
One of the tools discussed during the day was PeerWise. If you have not come across that yet, then you should take a look, becuase it looks like a very interesting tool. There is a good introduction on Youtube:
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