Improving student learning through programme assessment
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This document summarizes a presentation about taking a program-level approach to assessment and feedback to improve student learning. It discusses challenges with current assessment practices like high variation in assessment patterns, an over-reliance on summative assessment, and disconnected feedback. The presentation advocates reducing summative assessment to make room for more formative assessment. It provides case studies of programs that have successfully implemented program-level approaches, focusing on increasing formative assessment, linking formative and summative tasks, using feedback as a dialogue, and helping students internalize learning goals and standards. The goal is to shift from a transmission model of education to a more social constructivist model.
Improving student learning through programme assessment
- 1. Improving student learning through programme assessment @solentlearning @tansyjtweets Tansy Jessop King’s College London 26 January 2018
- 2. Today’s session • Your assessment and feedback challenges • Brief explanation of TESTA • Rationale for taking a programme approach • Four assessment and feedback problems and some solutions
- 3. Assessment and feedback challenges
- 4. Why assessment & feedback? 1) Assessment drives what students pay attention to, and defines the actual curriculum (Ramsden 2003). 2) Feedback is the single most important factor in learning (Hattie 2009; Black and Wiliam 1998).
- 8. IKEA 101: great for flat-pack furniture but..
- 9. Problems and some solutions for… 1. Variations in assessment patterns 2. High summative and low formative diets 3. Disconnected feedback 4. Confusion about goals and standards
- 10. TESTA definitions Summative: graded assessment which counts towards the degree Formative: Does not count: ungraded, required task with feedback
- 11. 1. Huge variations • What is striking for you about this data? • How does it compare with your context? • Does variation matter?
- 12. Assessment features across a 3 year UG degree (n=73) Characteristic Range Summative 12 -227 Formative 0 - 116 Varieties of assessment 5 - 21 Proportion of examinations 0% - 87% Time to return marks & feedback 10 - 42 days Volume of oral feedback 37 -1800 minutes Volume of written feedback 936 - 22,000 words
- 13. Typical A&F patterns (from n=73 programmes in 14 unis) Characteristic Low Medium High Volume of summative assessment Below 33 40-48 More than 48 Volume of formative only Below 1 5-19 More than 19 % of tasks by examinations Below 11% 22-31% More than 31% Variety of assessment methods Below 8 11-15 More than 15 Written feedback in words Less than 3,800 6,000-7,600 More than 7,600
- 14. 2. High summative: low formative • High summative on UK, Irish, NZ and Indian degrees • Low formative to summative ratio of 1:8 • Formative weakly practised and understood
- 16. A lot of people don’t do wider reading. You just focus on your essay question. In Weeks 9 to 12 there is hardly anyone in our lectures. I'd rather use those two hours of lectures to get the assignment done. It’s been non-stop assignments, and I’m now free of assignments until the exams – I’ve had to rush every piece of work I’ve done. CONSEQUENCES OF HIGH SUMMATIVE
- 17. It was really useful. We were assessed on it but we weren’t officially given a grade, but they did give us feedback on how we did. It didn’t actually count so that helped quite a lot because it was just a practice and didn’t really matter what we did and we could learn from mistakes so that was quite useful. WHAT ABOUT FORMATIVE?
- 18. If there weren’t loads of other assessments, I’d do it. It’s good to know you’re being graded because you take it more seriously. BUT… If there are no actual consequences of not doing it, most students are going to sit in the bar. The lecturers do formative assessment but we don’t get any feedback on it.
- 19. 1) Low-risk opportunities for students to learn from feedback (Sadler, 1989) 2) Helps students to fine-tune and understand requirements and standards (Boud 2000, Nicol, 2006) 3) Feedback to lecturers from formative tasks helps to adapt teaching (Hattie, 2009) 4) Engages students in cycles of reflection and collaboration (Biggs 2003; Nicol & McFarlane Dick 2006) 5) Encourages and distributes student effort (Gibbs 2004). Why formative matters
- 20. How to encourage formative assessment
- 21. Case Study 1 • Systematic reduction of summative across whole business school • Systematic ramping up of formative • All working to similar script • Whole department shift, experimentation, less risky together
- 22. Case Study 2 • Problem: silent seminar, students not reading • Public platform blogging • Current academic texts • In-class • Threads and live discussion • Linked to summative
- 24. Principles of good formative 1. Reduce summative to make space for formative 2. Whole programme, team approach 3. Public domain 4. Multi-stage, linked formative and summative 5. Risky, creative, challenging tasks 6. Collaborative 7. Developmental feedback
- 26. The feedback is generally focused on the module Because it’s at the end of the module, it doesn’t feed into our future work. If It’s difficult because your assignments are so detached from the next one you do for that subject. They don’t relate to each other. I read it and think “Well, that’s fine but I’ve already handed it in now and got the mark. It’s too late”. STRUCTURAL
- 27. It was like ‘Who’s Holly?’ It’s that relationship where you’re just a student. Because they have to mark so many that our essay becomes lost in the sea that they have to mark. Here they say ‘Oh yes, I don’t know who you are. Got too many to remember, don’t really care, I’ll mark you on your assignment’. RELATIONAL
- 29. Irretrievable breakdown… Your essay lacked structure and your referencing is problematic Your classes are boring and I don’t really like you
- 30. Ways to be dialogic • Conversation: who starts the dialogue? • Cycles of reflection across modules • Quick generic feedback • Feedback synthesis tasks • Peer feedback (especially on formative) • Technology: audio, screencast and blogging • From feedback as ‘telling’… • … to feedback as asking questions
- 31. Students feedback to us
- 32. Students to lecturers: Critical Incident Questionnaire Stephen Brookfield’s Critical Incident Questionnaire http://bit.ly/1loUzq0
- 33. Theme 4: Confusion about goals and standards • Consistently low scores on the AEQ for clear goals and standards • Alienation from the tools, especially criteria and guidelines • Symptoms: perceptions of marker variation, unfair standards and inconsistencies in practice
- 34. We’ve got two tutors- one marks completely differently to the other and it’s pot luck which one you get. They read the essay and then they get a general impression, then they pluck a mark from the air. It’s like Russian roulette – you may shoot yourself and then get an A1. They have different criteria, they build up their own criteria.
- 35. There are criteria, but I find them really strange. There’s “writing coherently, making sure the argument that you present is backed up with evidence”.
- 37. Taking action: internalising goals and standards • Regular calibration exercises • Discussion and dialogue • Discipline specific criteria (no cut and paste) Lecturers • Rewrite/co-create criteria • Marking exercises • Discussing exemplars Lecturers and students • Enter secret garden - peer review • Engage in drafting processes • Self-reflection Students
- 38. From this educational paradigm…
- 41. References Barlow, A. and Jessop, T. 2016. “You can’t write a load of rubbish”: Why blogging works as formative assessment. Educational Development. 17(3), 12-15. SEDA. Boud, D. and Molloy, E. 2013. ‘Rethinking models of feedback for learning: The challenge of design’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(6), pp. 698–712. Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. 2004. Conditions under which assessment supports students' learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. 1(1): 3-31. Harland, T., McLean, A., Wass, R., Miller, E. and Sim, K. N. 2014. ‘An assessment arms race and its fallout: High-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Jessop, T. and Tomas, C. 2016 The implications of programme assessment on student learning. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. Published online 2 August 2016. Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. 2016. The Influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student learning: a comparative study. Studies in Higher Education. Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. 2014. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale study of students’ learning in response to different assessment patterns. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 39(1) 73-88. Nicol, D. 2010. From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35: 5, 501 – 517. O'Donovan, B , Price, M. and Rust, C. 2008. 'Developing student understanding of assessment standards: a nested hierarchy of approaches', Teaching in Higher Education, 13: 2, 205 — 217 Sadler, D. R. 1989. ‘Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems’, Instructional Science, 18(2), pp. 119–144. doi: 10.1007/bf00117714. Wu, Q. and Jessop, T. 2018. Formative assessment: missing in action in both research-intensive and teaching focused universities. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education.
Editor's Notes
- #2: Tansy
- #8: Disconnected seeing the whole degree in silos – my module, lecturer perspective (Elephant, trunk, ears, tusks etc) compared to student perspective of the whole huge beast. I realise that what we were saying is two per module
- #9: Not so good for complex learning, integrating knowledge, lends itself to disposable curriculum fragmented learning. Amplified summative, less time for formative. Hard to make connections, difficult to see the joins between assessments, much more assessment, much more assessment to accredit each little box. Multiplier effect. Less challenge, less integration. Lots of little neo-liberal tasks. The Assessment Arms Race.
- #16: Summative as a ‘pedagogy of control’ Teach Less, learn more. Assess less, learn more.
- #33: Is anyone listening?
- #38: Students can increase their understanding of the language of assessment through their active engagement in: ‘observation, imitation, dialogue and practice’ (Rust, Price, and O’Donovan 2003, 152), Dialogue, clever strategies, social practice, relationship building, relinquishing power.