The provision of formative assessment and feedback presents a significant challenge for educators working with large cohorts of students at universities. To avoid being overwhelmed by the volume of marking and feedback, appropriate technologies must be employed to support learners and to scale assessment and module delivery in line with class size. This paper presents the outcomes of a technology-enhanced formative assessment strategy implemented through a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for a large undergraduate cohort of full-time students (class size 270+) enrolled in the Introduction to Cyber Security module.

We experimented with providing early and frequent access to online formative assessments, each followed by immediate automated feedback via the VLE. This paper reviews the impact of this approach on student experience and achievement of learning outcomes. End-of-term student feedback indicates that regular access to online quizzes, timely formative feedback, and opportunities for repetitive practice were highly valued. We also observed sustained student engagement through interaction data collected from the VLE Canvas.

Analysis of the data revealed a strong correlation between the number of quiz attempts and final exam performance, with the highest-performing students frequently engaging with the quizzes. We conclude that students who perform well on regular online quizzes are more likely to succeed on the exam with the correlation derived from aggregated group data which is central to the paper. This relationship is established at the group level for the large undergraduate cohort and the general trend is being reported.

These findings highlight how students interact with online content and make use of learning technologies for self-directed learning and skills development in computing subjects. Frequent access to formative assessment tools within a VLE, coupled with automated feedback, contributes to an effective technology-enhanced learning environment and supports learner development in large cohorts.

Keywords: Technology, education, virtual learning environment, assessment and feedback, large class.