Welcome to day 2 of our SoTL Advent Caledar. We are delighted to share insights from colleagues from the University of Glasgow and the University of Strathclyde.
- Professional Skill Enhancement Through the Use of Summative Blogs by Izah Bowes, Sueda Coskun, Shuwen Su and Julie Langan Martin
- Feedback Kitchen – Improving Quality and Efficiency in Feedback and Grading by Michael Harker
- Improving Supervision Through Better Matching by Ana Ramos de Oliveira dos Santos
Professional Skill Enhancement Through the Use of Summative Blogs by
Izah Bowes, Sueda Coskun, Shuwen Su and Julie Langan Martin
Background
We truly are a mixed bag of experiences when it comes to blogging as a form of alternative assessments. One author Shuwen described academic blogging as a ‘refreshing change of pace’ compared to more traditional means of assessment. Another author Izah, while in the thick of it with stress, found the added complications of an unfamiliar format akin to yet another straw on the camel’s back. Looking back now Izah can see how stress led to that very uncharitable description and can also see how alternative assessments provided the opportunity to mould information to fit different audiences, styles, and uses. These exercises allowed the development of skills that no essay ever could.
Academic blogs, the subject of this very blog, can be a form of alternative assessment, a style of evaluating student learning that stems from a need to, ’contextualise assessment in interesting, real-life and authentic tasks’ (Gulikers et al., 2006, p. 339; Maclellan, 2004). These assessments aim to motivate students to take responsibility for their learning, guiding them in such a way that assessments stem naturally from that learning process, rather than feeling like a test tacked on to the end of every module. They also offer the chance to learn valuable and transferrable professional knowledge and skills, something students will use again in the world of work, rather than just achieving a good grade for the student record.
The Present Study
Our project aims to evaluate the use of academic blogging as an alternative assessment within the MSc Global Mental Health (GMH) programme. The assessment was developed in partnership with The National Elf Service, an organisation that makes evidence-based research accessible for busy health and social care professionals. The National Elf Service, which started in 2011, has an extensive readership with 60,000 Twitter followers and a million website visitors in 2016. Students can chose from a range of research articles and transform one into a blog. Drawing on their extensive experience producing high-quality blogs of mental health research, the National Elf team delivers a training session on effective blog writing and provides ongoing guidance to the students and the course lead. High-quality student blogs are published through the partnership.
We plan to evaluate the blog assessment by seeking a variety of perspectives. To do this, we have designed three structured questionnaires for the module lead, the National Elf team, and the students. These questionnaires will explore possible perceived benefits of blogging, the usefulness of blogs to bridge academic knowledge and practice, and will seek to compare blogging to traditional assessment methods for skill development, and overall assessment satisfaction.
In addition to the questionnaires, reflections will be gathered from Sueda, Shuwen, and Izah, who undertook the blogging assessment in December 2024 and had their blogs published on the National Elf Service. The project is being carried out in collaboration with Professor Julie Langan Martin who leads the Global Mental Health Masters programme. This staff-student partnership adds an important dimension to the project, as it allows recent past students to contribute their reflections on the blog-writing experience alongside feedback from the Mental Elf team, the course lead, and the new cohort of GMH students currently completing their blog assignments.
Keywords: Authentic Assessment, Blogs, Student Engagement
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About the authors: Izah, Sueda and Shuwen completed the blog assessment in December 2024 and had their blogs published on the National Elf Service in 2025,
Shuwen Su summarises an epidemiological study that estimates the global prevalence and years lived with disability associated with mental health disorders and substance use disorders in young people aged 5-24 years old: Global insights into youth mental health prevalence: challenges and future directions
Izah Bowes considers a cross-sectional study exploring urbanicity and rates of untreated psychotic disorders in three diverse settings in the Global South: Trinidad, India and Nigeria City limits: untreated psychosis in the Global South
Sueda Coskun reflects on a recent case control study with data from five European countries, which suggests that migration during adolescence may be a particular risk factor for developing psychosis. Age-at-migration and ethnicity may increase psychosis risk
Feedback Kitchen – Improving Quality and Efficiency in Feedback and Grading by Michael Harker
In this 10-minute video, Michael shares some ideas about partially automating feedback and marking to enhance student experience.
Keywords: Feedback, formative assessment, quality, efficiency
Improving Supervision Through Better Matching by Ana Ramos de Oliveira dos Santos
Dissertation supervision is one of the most meaningful aspects of a degree. It shapes how students experience research, how they develop as independent thinkers, and how they connect what they have learned to their own academic and professional goals. Yet, in many large programmes, the process of allocating students to supervisors is often treated as a logistical task.
The challenge is not only scale but also fairness and transparency. Existing allocation methods such as surveys, pre-proposals, or preference rankings can unintentionally introduce inconsistencies and frustration, while also being time consuming. As the dissertation convener, I began to wonder whether this task could be reframed as an opportunity to improve students’ learning experience.
Quantifying Alignment Between Students and Supervisors
It seemed natural to explore whether closer topic alignment could support that aim. So I developed a score to measure how well a student’s dissertation topic aligns with a supervisor’s area of expertise. This draws on a hierarchical research classification system called the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes. Each code contains one letter and two digits, and each reflects a level of classification.
For example, in Figure 1, the topic Asset Pricing (G12) sits inside General Financial Markets (G1), which in turn belongs to the broader area of Financial Economics (G). The idea is to assign the highest weight to three-digit matches, while two digit and one digit overlaps also contribute to the score. If a student and a supervisor do not share even the general area, the score is zero, reflecting that there is no alignment.
Figure 1: Hierarchical structure of the JEL classification system.
Student Evidence and the Algorithm
The next step was to assess whether this approach have educational value, so I designed and conducted a survey1 with the 2024/25 postgraduate Economics cohort at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. I collected 102 responses, and the econometric analysis suggested that, among students supervised by the same person, those whose topics were more closely aligned with their supervisor’s expertise tended to report more positive supervision experiences.
Building on this insight, I developed an algorithm that matches each student with the supervisor with whom they share the highest score. To give a sense of how much this improves matching, Figure 2 compares the quality of matches produced by the algorithm with those from a random allocation. The share of exact three-digit matches is significantly higher under the algorithm, and the share of pairs with zero overlap is minimal.
Figure 2: Comparison of match quality between the algorithm and a random allocation, showing the percentage of student supervisor pairs matched at each level of JEL code similarity.
Applying the Approach Beyond Economics
Although this work focused on Economics, the same logic can be extended to other disciplines, as several fields have their own research classification systems. For departments interested in adopting this approach, I suggest beginning with a pilot year in which the algorithm produces a suggested allocation that is then reviewed and manually adjusted. It is also important to provide clear guidance to students and supervisors on how to select an appropriate and accurate list of codes. The same algorithm can be used to allocate moderators for dissertations, creating consistency and fairness across the full assessment process.
What We Gain by Rethinking Allocation
By viewing supervisor allocation as a design choice rather than a logistical task, we can improve not only efficiency and reduce the time involved but also the overall quality of the supervision experience. Fairness, transparency, and the alignment of academic interests all help create a more meaningful and engaging process for students and staff alike.
For those interested in reading the full study and a deeper discussion, the paper “Improving Student Supervisor Matching: Educational Gains from a Data Driven Approach” is available here.
Dr. Ana Ramos de Oliveira dos Santos, CMBE, Lecturer in Financial Economics, Adam Smith Business School – University of Glasgow
Keywords: student–supervisor matching; learning design; student experience; data-informed allocation; and fairness
Links:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SeCIR7ZNViyGPA5y9VrCCDx6vU-Uk8IF/view
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-ramos-de-oliveira-dos-santos-ph-d-cmbe-5665303b
Song for the day: Can’t take no more by Feedback
Leader Editor, Day 2 – Louise Sheridan