Focus: Presentation of findings of research analysing a large corpus of feedback comments on what students found helpful in personalised, learning analytics (LA) informed messaging from their teachers, using the Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES).
Background/context: Higher education institutions routinely collect a plethora of learning analytics on their students. Calls to apply these to improving learning outcomes through personalising the student experience (e.g. Stone, 2017) have so far met with only a limited success (Jivet et al., 2018). Using learning analytics in unit-specific, teacher-controlled ways is a promising approach to meeting this challenge (Gašević et al., 2016).
Description: SRES is a platform which enables teachers to send personalised emails to sub-groups of their student cohort, that reference individual student data such as assessment results, and contain textual variations conditional upon the values of an individual student’s data.
Method: We conducted thematic analysis of some 1,500 student comments, gathered over a six-year period (2017-2022) of institution-wide use of SRES at an Australian university. Comments were coded into categories of commonly identified themes, determined inductively. Coding counts provide a general indication of prevalence of categories.
Evidence: The category with the highest count (461) related to feedback on assessments, showing that teachers were using SRES for providing tailored feedback to their students, and that students appreciated this. Students also valued reminders (175), encouragement and motivation (110), clarification of unit requirements (92), direction to learning resources (71), and what they perceived as efforts to build a human connection (69) in personalised messages.
Contribution: To our knowledge this is the first large-corpus analysis of student perceptions of a personalised messaging application of learning analytics.
Engagement: Interactive presentation incorporating the research findings, audience participation via a discussion and polling activities.

Focus. Present a new conceptualisation of authenticity in assessment as supported by case study data.
Background/context. Authentic assessments often replicate real-world vocational tasks, yet this conceptualisation attracts criticism for failing to convey the meaning of the task (McArthur, 2023), and engaging the whole student (Vu & Dall’ Alba, 2014). Rethinking authenticity from an existential position (Sutton, 2020) may empower students to become more authentic selves. For first-year students navigating the transition into higher education, such learning opportunities may result in transformational change.
Description. This presentation will introduce a new conceptualisation of authenticity in assessment and include first-year case study evidence to demonstrate the benefit of reframing authenticity in this context.
Methods. 100 first-year faculty of health students (86 female; 26.13 ± 9.11 years), who previously completed a scaffolded series of health-related reflective journals, participated in an online qualitative survey. Students were prompted to reflect on the meaning and value of unit assessment tasks, with data thematically analysed.
Evidence. Preliminary analyses include two constructed themes. First, “the assessments were the catalyst for enabling self-reflection” represents the skills and abilities students acquired from completing the assessments that fostered their personal development. Second, “most changed for the better, but some stayed the same” represents the transformational growth that many students experienced following the assessments. For some, they maintained new behaviours two years after completing the unit. Yet a small proportion experienced no change, citing personal challenges with the assessments.
Contribution. This presentation offers a new conceptualisation of authenticity in assessments. Rather than focusing on replicating real-world tasks, designing tasks that enable students to identify personal meaning and value may yield a more authentic learning experience.
Engagement. A series of reflective questions about first-year assessment practices and traditional authentic assessments will be used to generate audience interaction during the presentation.

Focus: Presentation of research outcomes
Background: Evaluative judgement is the ability to judge the quality of a piece of work (Sadler, 1989), and fostering the development of this can promote student autonomy. Educators can assist students in developing and understand the concept of quality to judge their work (Tai, Ajjawi, Boud, Dawson & Panadero, 2018), and tertiary institutions are interested in helping students develop this skill. However, it is unclear what is the method on how to achieve this.
Description: Our study examined the effectiveness of a digital tool (assessment literacy module, ALM) developed at University of Melbourne. This tool scaffolds rubrics with exemplar papers, promoting active engagement by guiding students through the rubric and marking the exemplars and justifying the score given.
Methods: In a controlled experiment, the participants were allocated to two groups (one group completed the ALM, the other was given a rubric and exemplar papers) before completing a similar assessment task. Both groups also assessed their own work according to the rubric. The assignment was scored by assessors.
Evidence: Participants who completed the ALM received higher score than those who only read received the rubric and exemplars (ALM: 71.54±12.69 vs Control: 66.77±11.73, t-test; p=0.0379). However, there was no difference in self-assessment accuracy in either group (ALM: 12.31±8.93 vs Control: 11.43±9.44, t-test, p=0.2447). The duration spent in the ALM did not affect performance or accuracy compared to the assessor’s score (p = 0.1019). Interestingly, in the ALM group, participants who wrote complex justifications scored higher and were more accurate than those with superficial justifications (Simple: 69.07±12.88 vs Complex: 77.22±10.68, t-test, p=0.0244).
Contribution: These findings emphasise the importance of engagement in the development of evaluative judgment and have significant implications on tertiary assessment.
Engagement: Audience participation in using and apply a rubric as a conversation prompt.