What and When

Background

The original SPARK was developed by a multidisciplinary team in the late 1990s at the University of technology Sydney (UTS). Since 2003 Associate Professor Mark Freeman (also chief architect and developer of the original SPARK), Associate Professor Keith Willey and Dr Darrall Thompson began building a new version of SPARK that would provide more functionality, features and provide students with better feedback.

In using this version circa 2008 our focus changed from making group work fairer (something the tool does automatically with careful implementation) to using it to produce both formative and summative learning-oriented feedback to complete the learning cycle and encourage the ongoing development of skills (see references Willey, K. & Freeman M, 2006 a and b).

In 2008 Associate Professor