Dr Hoo Hui Teng embarked on her journey to create an online rubric system to address a key issue. As the head of the Nanyang Business School (NBS) Accreditation Office in 2011, she was tasked with collecting evidence of student learning through course assessments and feedback across all programmes at NBS. This led to the birth of the NBS Assurance of Learning (AOL) movement. Collecting paper feedback forms and duplicating them for students was not practical — literally a paper exercise.
To solve this problem, Dr Hoo came up with the idea of a centralised online rubric system that could handle feedback. She had four objectives in mind: to inform students of grading criteria, grade with rubrics, eliminate the need for paper-based feedback, and provide students with a centralised platform to view quantitative and qualitative feedback from instructors and peers on their task and teamwork performance. To turn her vision into reality, Dr Hoo enlisted the help of CITS. With their assistance, eRubrics, an electronic rubric grading system was developed and parked on the NTU eUreka platform. In 2022, the second version of eUreka, GradeWay, was launched and is currently in the soft launch stage.
The NTU GradeWay platform has been refined over a decade of trials and user feedback from Nanyang Business School faculty and the Accreditation Office staff. Today, GradeWay/eUreka has made a significant impact on NBS and other schools at NTU by providing a centralised rubric system that supports multi-source assessment and feedback for student learning. Instructor grading, student self-evaluation, and peer assessment of tasks and teamwork performance based on a set of criteria can all be performed on GradeWay using eRubrics. By providing a centralised rubric system, the platform has made it easier for instructors and students to provide and receive feedback, making the process more efficient, effective, and convenient. The platform with eRubrics has been widely adopted by both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in NBS and it has also been used by faculty from other schools.
GradeWay has thus fulfilled its intended objectives and has provided the NBS Accreditation Office with information to report on NBS Assurance of Learning to international accreditation bodies. The innovation has received accolades from accreditation peer reviewers (dean-equivalents) from other institutes of higher learning. Additionally, this innovation aligns with NTU’s sustainability initiatives by going paperless and being a smart campus that incorporates educational technologies in its pedagogy.
Dr Hoo’s dedication to enhancing the assessment and feedback processes at NBS through technology is evident in her enthusiasm to share about eRubrics on GradeWay/eUreka whenever the topic of student feedback arises. A proponent of feedback literacy, she has conducted research and published works on innovative assessment and feedback, including:
Deneen, C. & Hoo, H.T. (2023). Connecting teacher and student assessment literacy with self-evaluation and peer feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 48(2), 214-226.
Hoo, H.T., Deneen, C., & Boud, D. (2022). Developing student feedback literacy through self and peer assessment interventions. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 47(3), 444-457.
Newman, M., Kwan, I., Shucan Bird, K., & Hoo, H.T. (2021), The impact of Feedback on student attainment: A systematic review. London: Education Endowment Foundation.
Hoo, H. T., Tan, K., & Deneen, C. (2020). Negotiation of self- and peer evaluation on teamwork competencies with reflective journaling in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45(3), 431-446.
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