Lincoln Repository

The Lincoln Repository is a fantastic site for access to up-to-date teaching and learning resources:

http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk

Fantastic site for creating surveys

http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/support/how-to-create-a-survey

Developing student feedback by Alison Hramiack (2007)

Developing Assessment Feedback

Dr Alison Hramiak, Sheffield Hallam University

Alison is course leader for the 14 - 19 ICT Post Graduate Certificate in Education, and also the team leader for the GPS Module in the Education Division. In her Busy Guide she shares some ideas on assessment and feedback in Higher Education with the intention of refreshing practitioners on the why’s and how’s of assessment and feedback, with some practical advice on how to go about applying the principles described within the article.
Introduction
The purpose of this document is to share some ideas on assessment and feedback in Higher Education – although the principles described could just as easily be implemented in other types of educational institutions. It is not intended as a formal academic document, rather, it is intended that the document be used to refresh practitioners on the why’s and how’s of assessment and feedback, with some practical advice on how to go about applying the principles described within the article.
We need to get students to focus on their learning and away from where they have got to and what they have achieved (as their primary goal). This is part of a larger culture change which will take time, but part of that change is adapting the ways in which we feedback to students. Students need to understand how they are learning and how to progress with it and this is where feedback - in its many forms - comes in. Feeding back to students in order to engage them in an iterative process of using the feedback to produce improved work each time they hand work in, is has also been called feeding forward It is precisely this type of feedback – to feed forward – that is discussed in this article, with practical ideas of how to go about this for the benefit of you and your students.
What is feedback?
The key to assessment is feedback. Feedback could be defined as any type of communication via a variety of mechanisms or types, of any size or format, that gives information on the quality or standard that a piece of work has reached. It is usually between the tutor and student, but is not restricted to this, and could be between peers or colleagues.
This has been defined in a purposely imprecise way so as to give an idea of how wide the notion of feedback can be, and it is this which needs to be clarified with your students. Feedback is not restricted to the generally accepted practice that it is written, lengthy, and individual. It can be whatever you want it to be - as long as you explicitly let your students know that this is the case.
Why is feedback important to your students?
Can you remember when you were a student? All that effort that you put into a piece of work which makes you desperate to know if it was okay, if it 'passed'. It is a measure of how well you are doing, and how well you are doing compared with your friends and peers. It solidifies the bond between you and your tutor. It makes you feel like a person to them, and not just another number in the system. Feedback is part of the relationship between students and their tutors. It is also important for peer evaluation. There may be someone on their course who they measure themselves against. Feedback, as defined above, can take on many forms, and unless you are very clear with students on this, they may not always know when they are getting feedback - it's up to you to be explicit, and to set their expectations on feedback right from the start of their course.
Feedback is also important as an iterative tool by which they improve their work before they next hand some in – described by some as feeding forward. Your feedback to them is the means by which they can develop and progress their work to achieve better marks. As such, it is crucial that they receive feedback well before the next assignment hand in date.
Why is it important to the teacher/tutor?
Assessment and feedback serve to cement the relationship between you and your students. It is also important in terms of determining the authenticity with respect to their work, and thus avoiding plagiarism or cheating. It shows you care. It shows them that they mean something to you and that you understand their situation.
If, through the feedback of their work, you enable students to feel more appreciated for the effort they put in, then it is more than likely that they will continue to put in at least as much effort for future work. A sense of belonging on the part of the student, a humanising of the relationship between the tutor and the student, should serve to enhance the effort they put in, and the way they use the feedback you have given them. Feedback then becomes more than just a grade, a pass or fail, it becomes a means by which improvements can be made, and personalising that ensures that the feedback is actually used to feed forward to their next piece of work.
Types of feedback
It is important that you and your students – when you set their expectations on feedback - get past the idea that feedback has to be a miniature version of 'Crime and Punishment' and that it should be done in hard copy, in triplicate. This may entail a larger culture change for some more than others, and it is up to you as the tutor to guide them through this change, and to give them experiences of feedback that are both apposite to the needs of the course, but different from what they might have experienced before. Ideas on how to do this are given later in this article
The crucial thing about feedback is…timing! Better to give some, any feedback quickly, within a week or two, than detailed feedback weeks or even months after hand in. If, for example, you have 25 3000 word reports or essays to mark, it is better to give students some general feedback as a group, within the first week or so of hand in ,and then to follow this up with detailed individual feedback at a later date – a further two weeks after the initial feedback. As long as you set their expectations appropriately, the relationship between student and tutor is maintained, and not damaged by students wondering why they have not received lengthy individual emailed accounts of their work the day after they handed it in.
The aim of feedback then, is to develop the relationship between the author and the reader and this is not necessarily always served best by technology. It may be better to hand write or sign off after type written feedback. Or, it may be better to go back to verbal feedback to retain the authenticity and commitment to the relationship between the student and the tutor. There are times when technology does have its place in feedback though, and it can be used to enhance the practice of feeding back to students if used fittingly.
Ways to feedback (and forward) to students
These are just some ideas for the ways you can give feedback - the list is not exhaustive.
Give an overview of a set of assignments quickly. To do this, give yourself a set amount of time to briefly look at all the assignments in one set (I can do about 20 3K reports in 60 min for this type of feedback - it's a personal thing, but the important point to remember is to limit how much time you give it). Write some brief notes as you go through them on the general quality of the work handed in - 3-4 paragraphs - then distribute this to your students within two weeks of hand in. This can be done via the institution’s VLE or email for example.
Detailed individual feedback can then follow at a later date, and this can be typed or annotated text.
Peer to Peer (P2P) work and feedback - set a short essay, get them to mark each other's (if necessary to set criteria) then get them to feedback to their marking partner, and also as a whole group to each other, on the exercise itself.
Wikis - on the VLE, get them to contribute to wikis for their course, and get them to comment on the pages added to feedback constructively to their peers as the wikis build up.
Run a discussion board or forum on the VLE that is dedicated to assignments and to feedback from them - P2P and student/tutor feedback as required.
Run a synchronous chat session on the VLE that is dedicated to assignment feedback. It need only take up to an hour, but might be something that is easier to in a shorter time span than giving individual detailed feedback - use it as an interim measure in much the same way as the overview mentioned in the first bullet point above.
Presentations - a whole class or group can offer constructive feedback to their peers, and by adding this to your comments, it provides students with a larger amount of feedback to work from. You could also give them a copy of your notes as well.
Tutorials - if and when you carry out these, make them take notes as well so that they have a written record of any feedback you gave.
A whole host of class/group activities lend themselves naturally to P2P evaluation and feedback - use them.
Use of exemplars - read good ones to the class, share good ones or parts of them with the class or with targeted students whose work would benefit from seeing how others do it. This can also be done on a peer to peer basis in a more informal way using a buddy system to engage lower ability students with those that can help them with their work.
Drafts can also be used as a means of feeding back to students though these must be used with caution and not to enable students to gain better marks directly from the modifications made by a tutor on their draft assignments - better to look at draft plans or notes than draft 4000 word essays!
Self assessment is also a useful feedback tool - get your students to gauge for themselves just how well they think they are doing. This could be through hand (yes, hand) written sheets done at home or in class, or through personal reflective blogs through the VLE, or through a set of reflective questions set by you for them to answer.
Blogs can also be used to support P2P work as students could offer constructive criticism of presentations or work done in class through the use of blogging facilities – either in the public domain or through the institutions VLE. These can be tutor facilitated or even, for group work, could be facilitated by a designated group leader within the students.
Blogs can also be used as a private space – from within the VLE – in which students can record their own reflections, and chronologically record their progress as learners on the course. This is a very useful tool for professional courses, such as teaching or nursing, where such reflective practice is often required as a mandatory part of their work on the course.
Podcasts can also be used for assessment and feedback. Podcasts – audio and audio-visual, of tutor feedback on student presentations in class could be uploaded to a VLE for future review by individuals in the group. They can also be used for P2P review in this way. A tutor could even podcast an overview of a groups assignments with pointers to further reading for students that can be reviewed as and when required by individual or groups within the cohort.
Feedback can also be delivered via text messaging on phones or as MP3 files – making use of the latest mobile technology to ensure that students receive their feedback in ways that are convenient and timely for them.
Remember, it is better to give some feedback quickly, than none at all for many weeks. Think outside the box - feedback can take many forms - all you have to do is be explicit about when and how they are getting the feedback from you.
As stated, this list is not exhaustive, it is intended to give you some guidelines on improving the students experience in terms of assessment and feedback by helping you to provide timely, high quality feedback in whatever form suits both you and your students.
Summary
What I have tried to do here is to explain in very simple terms why feedback is important to tutors and students alike, and to illustrate the many varied ways that feedback can be given to students if you set their expectations appropriately at the start of your course. Feedback should be part of a well managed and fruitful relationship between a student and a tutor, and should be part of an iterative cycle that results in them engaging in a progressive, enjoyable, teaching and learning experience for the duration of their course. The more they are involved in this cycle, the more both they and you will get out of it.

Warren (2004) Engineering Subject Centre Guide: Learning and Teaching Theory for Engineering Academics. Loughborough: HEA Engineering Subject Centre.

Constructive Alignment - and why it is important to the learning process

What is Constructive Alignment?

Constructive Alignment, a term coined by John Biggs (Biggs, 1999) is one of the most influential ideas in higher education. It is the underpinning concept behind the current requirements for programme specification, declarations of Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) and assessment criteria, and the use of criterion based assessment.

There are two parts to constructive alignment:

Students construct meaning from what they do to learn.
The teacher aligns the planned learning activities with the learning outcomes.
The basic premise of the whole system is that the curriculum is designed so that the learning activities and assessment tasks are aligned with the learning outcomes that are intended in the course. This means that the system is consistent.



Figure 1. Aligning learning outcomes, learning and teaching activities and the assessment. Adapted from Biggs(1999) p 27

Alignment is about getting students to take responsibility for their own learning, and establishing trust between student and teacher. If students construct their own learning and this takes place inside the students' brains, where teachers cannot reach, then the real learning can only be managed by the students. All teachers can do is to create an environment which is encouraging and supportive of students engaging in the appropriate and necessary mental activity. We can do this by providing the pieces and specifications of what the students must become able to do as a result of modifying their cognitive structures, and set up or suggest activities that students can use to achieve these changes or intended learning outcomes.

We must have a clear idea of what we want students to be able to do at the end of a unit of study, and communicate these intended learning outcomes to students so they can at least share in the responsibility of achieving them. However, we know that students will inevitably tend to look at the assessment and structure their learning activities, as far as they are able, to optimise their assessment performance. We must therefore make sure that the assessment very obviously does test the learning outcomes we want students to achieve, that, by being strategic optimisers of their assessment performance, students will actually be working to achieve the intended learning outcomes. In other words, the ILOs, the learning activities and the assessment must all be aligned. The assessment criteria should differ from the ILOs only in so far as that they might give more detail of performance levels required for specific rewards. If we tell students that we want them to achieve something (ILOs) and then assess them against assessment criteria that do not match, they will feel cheated and will become cynical strategic surface learners. Alignment is really simply a matter of honesty and fairness that establishes the trust required for students to be confident that they can manage their own learning.

Achieving Constructive Alignment

Constructive alignment is actually extremely difficult to achieve: it is virtually impossible to get it right first time, through so-called rational top-down course design. That is why the ILTHE, for example, emphasises the importance of the reflective practitioner; the teacher who constantly modifies course design and delivery, constantly trying to work closer to the unattainable perfect constructive alignment. Moreover, this is not simply a matter of modifying learning activities and assessment. Sometimes, in the delivery of a module, assessment outcomes, or our work with students, reveal learning outcomes we had not anticipated but that we nevertheless recognise as valuable. These emergent learning outcomes need to be identified and incorporated into the intended learning outcomes. Constructive alignment cannot be achieved or maintained in an institutional system that does not allow frequent modification of module descriptions (figure 2).



Figure 2. Concept map illustrating the main ideas put forward by Biggs and the relationships between them in the Curriculum Design Process.

If we are taking a single component of a programme, we can 'Constructively Align' that course by tackling the following steps:

Define the learning outcomes.
Select learning and teaching activities likely to enable the students to attain the outcomes.
Assess the students' outcomes and grade the students learning.
Setting the Learning Outcomes

This is how we are intending to define the course for our students, (though the students maybe influenced by the assessment). We need to think about the learning as what we want the student to do. We want the students to 'behave' like engineers making competent decisions in their future careers; the outcomes should mirror this. As we want the students to do things, then it makes sense for the outcomes to be specified in terms of verbs, this will also have the added benefit of leading us to design assessments that measure the objectives.

In considering the verbs to describe learning outcomes, we can return to the work on levels and the different levels of learning. We will probably want to mix the levels of learning required having some lower level outcomes that deal with the basic facts, as well as having higher levels that require the students to deal with new situations. This will provide us with the basis of the learning outcomes for our unit.

For example if we are aligning a course on networks, then our low level outcomes would be to state Kirchhoff's Law and Thevenin's Law. However, we also would want extended understanding where we would expect students to apply these laws to new contexts, perhaps designing their own circuits.

Selecting Learning and Teaching Activities

We need to consider activities that will cause the students to engage with the learning. Course documentation usually defines the amount of study, in many institutions this is defined in terms of contact time in lectures and tutorials. However, we have seen (see learning styles) that these are not the most effective way for the majority of students to learn as they can adopt passive learning approaches. Consequently, we need to consider approaches that require participation that is more active and encourage more high-level learning. Therefore, if we want students to consider that we expect them to synthesize concepts and link them together then we should consider assessment activities that encourage that behaviour, such as a mini-lab project, or a case study such as designing and costing a new power plant in a location with particular requirements.

Assessing and Grading the Student

We need to ensure that we assess the learning outcomes. If we are seeing how the students apply knowledge of the environment and environmental legislation to new situations then that is what we should assess. However, we should also consider how we assess the student and arrive at the final grade. We can take two approaches to assessment. The first, the traditional norm assessment model, is where we break down the students 'learning' into their responses to individual questions and sub units, assigning marks to their 'correct' responses. The problem with this is that it encourages students to play the assessment game, and go for a mark 'trawl' in exams, trying to pick-up bits of marks here and there. The alternative is criteria-based assessment where grades are awarded according to how well students meet the desired learning outcomes (see table 1 for an example).

Table 1. A constructively aligned assessment scheme (adapted from Biggs 2003)
Objectives Grading Criteria
Grading will be based on you attaining the following criteria: Grades will depend on how well you can demonstrate that you have met all objectives:
Demonstrate appreciation and understanding of the delicate balance in the environment. A: Awarded if you have clearly met all the objectives, displaying deep knowledge of the content, creative thinking, applying the concepts effectively to new situations
Demonstrate understanding of sustainability and related issues in the environment. B: Awarded when all objectives have been met well and effectively
Have knowledge of relevant UK and EU environmental legislations. C: Awarded when the objectives have been addressed satisfactorily, or where evidence is strong for some objectives, but weaker in others.
Relate specific pollution control technologies to industries. F: Less than C, or work not submitted
Appreciate the range of engineering related environmental problems.
Nearly all degree programmes will require the criteria grades to be converted to a grade, this is fairly straightforward; a good ‘A’ gets 78%, a bare ‘A’ gets 70%, and so on. For a more in-depth discussion of assessment, see Biggs(1999) Chapters 8 and 9.

Advantages of Constructive Alignment

Constructive alignment encourages clarity in the design of the curriculum, and transparency in the links between learning and assessment. In a truly Constructively Aligned curriculum it facilitates deep learning as the activities are designed for that purpose. This should improve the quality of learning and graduates in our profession.

Further Reading

John Biggs (1999): Teaching for Quality Learning at University, (SRHE and Open University Press, Buckingham)

Norman Jackson (2002) QAA: Champion for Constructive Alignment! (Imaginative Curriculum Symposium, November 2002)

John Biggs (2003): Aligning Teaching and Assessment to Curriculum Objectives, (Imaginative Curriculum Project, LTSN Generic Centre)

Claus Brabrand (2006): "Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding"
(19-minute award-winning short-film on Constructive Alignment).
URL: [ http://www.daimi.au.dk/~brabrand/short-film/ ]

Source

The chapter above was taken from Houghton, Warren (2004) Engineering Subject Centre Guide: Learning and Teaching Theory for Engineering Academics. Loughborough: HEA Engineering Subject Centre.

guide to Assessment by Sue Bloxham (2007)

Guide to Assessment

Professor Sue Bloxham, University of Cumbria

Sue Bloxham is Professor of Academic Practice and leads the Centre for the Development of Learning and Teaching (CDLT) at Cumbria. She has been the main force behind the development of the University's learning, teaching and assessment strategy. This guide is designed to provide a short summary of issues to be considered in developing, implementing and managing assessment in teacher education programmes. It highlights the important matters that need to be taken into account and provides links to relevant sources of help and suggestions for further reading.
Introduction
Research and experience tell us very forcefully about the importance of assessment in higher education. It shapes the experience of students and influences their behaviour more than the teaching they receive. If we have to choose one area of our practice to concentrate on in order to improve student learning and achievement, it must be assessment; ‘there is more leverage to improve teaching through changing assessment than there is in changing anything else’ (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004-5:22).
This guide is designed to provide a short summary of issues to be considered in developing, implementing and managing assessment in teacher education programmes. It highlights the important matters that need to be taken into account and provides links to relevant sources of help and suggestions for further reading.
Assessment of, for and as Learning
One of the difficult aspects of assessment is that it has to fulfil several different functions, often thought of as assessment of learning, assessment for learning and assessment as Learning (Earl, 2003):
Assessment of Learning characterises how we may traditionally view assessment. It involves making judgments about students’ summative achievement for purposes of selection and certification (Qualified Teacher Status) and it also acts as a focus for institutional accountability and quality assurance, for example the number of ‘good’ degrees awarded is used as a key variable in university league tables.
Assessment for learning is formative and diagnostic. It provides information about student achievement which allows teaching and learning activities to be changed in response to the needs of the learner and recognises the huge benefit that feedback can have on learning (Black and Wiliam, 1998).
Assessment as learning can be defined in two interlinked ways. Firstly, at a very straightforward level, tackling assignments and revision is when higher education students do much of their learning. Secondly, assessment as learning is a subset of assessment for learning and sees student involvement in assessment, using feedback, participating in peer assessment, and self-monitoring of progress, as moments of learning themselves (Black and Wiliam, 1998). Students come to have a better understanding of the subject matter and their own learning through their close involvement with assessment.
Balancing the different purposes of assessment in teacher education
Each of these purposes has a part to play but one cannot expect individual modules to embrace all of them. Methods such as group, peer and self-assessment (useful for assessment as learning) will always provoke concerns (perhaps unjustly) about reliability and fairness. However, such approaches can promote learning which is difficult, if not impossible, by other methods. On the other hand, tutor/ mentor assessment of performance on teaching practice provides confidence that standards are being met and is thus used as assessment of learning. When students get feedback on early or draft assignments or when they have dialogue with their mentor during teaching practice, the focus is on assessment for learning. An interesting project which examined what features contributed to both summative and formative assessment on teaching practice can be found at in Kynch (2005).
The danger of a modular structure, particularly in primary teacher education with many subjects involved, is that a fragmented assessment strategy emerges. Collaborative planning needs to focus on making sure that assessment across the programme balances the different purposes. It should also consider how the strategy helps students meet the programme learning outcomes to help create a coherent programme experience. A programme approach can reduce the risk of bunching of assessment submission dates, over-reliance one or two assessment methods (for example, essays and exams) and overloading students with several major projects at the same time. See the final section of this paper on ‘diversifying assessment’ for more discussion of different assessment methods.
What does the research say?
The literature on assessment in higher education suggests the following factors that we should take into account in considering our assessment practice:·
Assessment strongly influences students’ learning, including what they study, when they study, how much work they do and the approach they take to their learning;·
The type of assessment influences the quality and amount of learning achieved by students;·
Poorly designed assessment can lead to students developing limited conceptual understanding of the material although sometimes the assessment task masks their limited understanding;·
Well-designed assessment is likely to be intrinsically motivating for students and lead to better retention of material which the students can apply in other settings;·
Students’ prior experience of learning and perceptions of assessment may override attempts by lecturers to change their approach to learning, and they should be helped to a better understanding of assessment tasks;·
Assessment tasks may not be assessing what we think they are assessing, they may be assessing lower-level understanding of the material, and may be failing to assess the stated outcomes of a programme of study;·
Anxiety-provoking assessment is associated with a surface approach to learning by students;·
Feedback is the most important aspect of the assessment process for raising achievement yet currently students express considerable dissatisfaction with much feedback and it does not always impact on their learning;·
Self and peer assessment are crucial elements in helping students to learn from their assessment and become more autonomous learners;·
Feedback should inform tutors’ teaching and support strategies as well as student activity.
Influencing student learning
Students adopt a surface approach to learning when their intention is to cope with the requirements of the task but with little personal engagement or aim to understand the material. They tend to focus on the detail of the knowledge, memorising the information or procedures, for example rote learning for an examination. As a result, students do not grasp the overall meaning of their studies, develop limited conceptual understanding of the material and have poor quality learning outcomes (Entwistle, 1997).
In contrast, students who adopt a deep approach aim to understand ideas and are intrinsically interested in their studies. The learning strategies they use include relating information and ideas together and to their own experience and looking for patterns, principles and meaning in the texts. This approach leads to higher quality learning outcomes for the student.
An approach to learning is not a fixed characteristic of an individual but is influenced by their perception of the learning environment, most particularly the assessment task (Morgan and Beatty, 1997; Biggs, 2003). Appropriate assessment can encourage students to adopt a deep approach to learning and the contrary is true for poorly-designed assessment. If students perceive that a task requires memorisation and reproduction of facts, then that is what they will do. The research evidence suggests that if the nature of the learning context is changed, and assessment is the most influential element of that context (Elton and Johnston, 2002), there is a likelihood that students’ approach will change (Prosser and Trigwell, 1999).
It is not just the nature of the assignment that makes a difference. Students’ perception of the ‘what the assessment requires’ affects the approach they take (Prosser and Trigwell, 1999). Students behave differently because they perceive tasks differently. Changing the assessment may change the approach of some students who perceive the new requirements appropriately, but will not necessarily change every student’s approach to learning. Students bring their history of learning with them and these habitual tendencies (Ramsden, 2003) may work against students engaging in effective learning in higher education. This has important implications for preparing students for assessment, particularly those home and international students who cannot draw on family and personal networks to help them understand the demands of UK higher education. Successful efforts to help students understand what is expected of them include:
Providing clear guidance and assessment criteria;
Students’ marking exemplar assignments against the assessment criteria in order to better understand them;
Practising and getting feedback on unfamiliar assessment tasks in low stakes situations – for example presentations;
Grading their own and each others’ draft assignments;
Activities designed to clarify plagiarism (see www.jiscpas.ac.uk for advice, information and ideas on plagiarism prevention).
Gibbs and Simpson (2004-5) show that more frequent assessment tasks are associated with greater time allocated to study and there is evidence that students will work hard in preparation for some modes of assessment in comparison with others, for example students prepare less well for multiple choice tests compared with assignments where they have to create rather than choose the answer (Traub and MacRury, 1990). In addition to assessment influencing the amount of time spent studying, it can also affect when students study, for example, infrequent examinations and coursework tasks encourage students to bunch all their learning hours together in the time immediately preceding the examination or submission date and they do less work overall (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004-5). Overloading of students through excessive amounts of content is also associated with a surface approach to learning (Ramsden, 2003).
There is a range of effective ways to increase student activity through assessment without incurring extra marking workload:
On-line tests which provide automated, immediate feedback;
Peer marking of assignments in class;
Submission of weekly short assignments of which the tutor randomly selects a small proportion for summative marking and feedback;
Submission of a log book indicating work undertaken during the module.
If it is a programme leading to a professional qualification, some learning outcomes might be assessed during a placement or practicum
What are you assessing?
A ‘valid’ assessment is one which assesses the stated learning outcomes. Prosser and Trigwell (1999) point out that assessment doesn’t always test what we think it does. For example, Entwistle and Entwistle (1997) show that where students are able to reproduce in their examination answer the structure of the topic as given by the tutor, they can give the impression of well structured understanding. Similarly Knight (2000) found that if a student has been given considerable support and direction, they may produce an assignment of similar quality to one produced in another context where the questions are not closely aligned to the teaching and the student has to work unsupported. Although the products look the same, they do not represent the same achievement.
Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) taxonomy
This is useful in discriminating between different stages of achievement. It suggests two dimensions, the knowledge dimension and the cognitive process dimension.
The cognitive process dimension enables the tutor to identify an appropriate verb which should be used to express the learning outcome. The other dimension determines what knowledge (the noun) the verb is describing, and delineates between the facts a student needs in order to be familiar with the discipline; conceptual knowledge such as knowledge of classifications, principles, theories, models and structures; procedural knowledge, that is knowing how to do something including techniques, skills and methods of enquiry, and metacognitive knowledge, knowledge of self and cognitive tasks and methods of learning and organising ideas (Anderson, 2003).Figure 1: The Taxonomy Table (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001)

(Adapted from Anderson, 2003:29)
Anderson (2003) argues that this taxonomy table helps teachers design appropriate assessment because it enables them to work out prototypical ways of assessing objectives that fall within the relevant cells. For example, it is easy to see that a multiple choice exam could assess memory of factual knowledge or possibly understanding of conceptual knowledge (the cells marked X in figure 1). However, application of procedural knowledge (cells marked Y) will need an assessment task, for example problem solving or case study analysis, which requires students to demonstrate not just that they can remember or understand something, but that they can use it.
Such a taxonomy is helpful in thinking about what different assessment tasks are testing. Here are two education essays:
‘Outline one aspect of the National Literacy Strategy and explain why it is important for the teaching of reading’ (Year 1)
‘Critically assess the claim that streaming and setting do more harm than good’ (Year 3)
The first example appears to demand recall of factual information and understanding of conceptual knowledge, again in the cells marked X in figure 1. The second essay appears to be demanding ‘evaluation’, the cells marked Z in figure 1, a relatively high level cognitive skill requiring good command of the subject matter. Unfortunately, the questions alone are insufficient to determine whether they measure qualitatively different achievements. For example, if the issues in the level 3 question have been carefully rehearsed in a lecture, the student may be largely engaged in reproducing the tutor’s notes; a low level skill. Likewise, if the level 1 question topic has not been ‘taught’, the process of researching the answer may be at least, if not more, demanding. This discussion alerts us to the potential limitations of what may appear to be demanding assessment tasks.
Feedback for learning
The most important aspect of the assessment process in raising achievement is the provision of feedback (Black and Wiliam, 1998; Gibbs and Simpson, 2004-5). Entwistle et al. (1989) studying engineering students showed that early failure was related to students gaining no feedback at all in their first term.
Feedback has little value unless it is timely, students pay attention to it, understand it, and act on it (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004-5) and various studies suggest or investigate practical activities to help students engage with feedback (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). Black and Wiliam (1998) in an extensive review of literature on formative assessment concluded that feedback as comments can have a significantly greater effect on future improvement compared with feedback that is limited to a grade or mark. Knight and Yorke (2003) argue that feedback is mostly likely to be useful to learners if students are willing and able to expose their areas of weakness and confusion with a topic. This is supported by Black et al.’s (2003) work on formative assessment with school teachers where students found that revealing their problems was worthwhile and led to gaining help. Reflective assignments such as learning journals attempt to tackle this dilemma by providing students with an opportunity to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses as learners without losing marks but these provide their own problems for assessment (Gibbs, 1995).
Recent studies have placed greater importance on the notion of ‘feed forward’ (Hounsell, 2006; Torrance, 1993) which focuses on what a student should pay attention to in future assessment tasks. For example, it may be more useful to students to state three clear ways in which they can improve future assignments rather than provide copious detail on the specific assignment you are marking.
Using feedback to adjust teaching
It is not just students who need to act on feedback. For assessment to function in a formative way that supports students’ future learning, the findings have to be used to adjust teaching (Black and Wiliam, 1998; Prosser and Trigwell, 1999; Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). Difficulties with a particular concept or problem may signal that further or different tuition is needed. Angelo and Cross (1993) and Nicol and MacFarlane-Dick (2006)provide a range of ‘classroom assessment techniques’ designed to assist staff in gaining immediate feedback from students which can be used to revise teaching strategies. See McNair (2000) for an example of using these techniques in a teacher education setting. However, course structures with short modules can make it difficult for individual tutors to respond to the information about student learning emerging from summative assessment.
Students as assessors
Recent work in the field of feedback is focusing on the importance of student as self-assessor; someone who is able to provide their own feedback because they understand the standard they are aiming for and can judge and change their own performance in relation to that standard, that is self-regulation (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). This is assessment as learning (Klenowski & Elwood, 2002; Earl, 2003) and is firmly located in Sadler’s (1989) view that improvement involves three key elements: ·
students must know what the standard or goal is that they are trying to achieve (assessment guidance); ·
they should know how their current achievement compares to those goals (feedback)·
they must take action to reduce the gap between the first two (applying feedback to future assignments).
As Black and Wiliam assert (1998), ‘self assessment is a sine qua non for effective learning’ (p15) and certainly systematic reviews of research (Black and Wiliam 1998, Falchikov 2005) indicate strong positive benefits to students of being involved in their own assessment.
If students are to become effective teachers, they need to develop the capacity to judge the quality of teaching. Involving students in assessment provides an authentic opportunity for them to learn what ‘quality’ is and to apply that judgement to their own work (Black et al., 2003). The context might be classroom practice, designing a scheme of work or writing an essay. Thereby the student becomes aware of what the goals or standards of teaching are (Earl, 2003) a precondition of taking responsibility for their work (Swann and Ecclestone, 1999). Feedback allows the student to see their performance against those goals. This view is supported by Black et al. (1998) when they stress that peer and self assessment are the key to learning from formative assessment. It is not enough for a tutor to tell a student what they need to do to improve (‘Your writing is too descriptive’, ‘you need to pay greater attention to pupil differentiation in your planning’) if the student does not understand what these comments mean. They cannot take action to do anything about it until they begin to share the tutor’s conception of the subject (Sadler, 1989).
It is argued that assessment and feedback activity of this nature does not just contribute to learning at university but develops learning and evaluative skills essential for employment and lifelong learning (Boud and Falchikov, 2006).
Tackling the problems with feedback
Yet there are many difficulties with current feedback practice in higher education·
It is sometimes hard to read;·
It is hard for students to interpret (language, terminology); ·
It comes too late to be useful for other assignments/ exams in a module;·
Students don’t see it as useful;·
Students don’t pay attention to it or act on it;·
It can be expensive to produce (staff time).
Student perception and mediation of written feedback is an under-researched area but Weaver (2006) found that students identified negative and over-general feedback as unhelpful. Feedback needs to provide specific and sufficient comment and suggestions on strengths, areas for development and strategies for improvement. General praise is not useful, whereas comment on a specific strength acts as advice for the future because it is telling the student to use that particular strategy in future assessments. Likewise general or obscure criticisms will not be useful and if comments are too grounded in the specific assignment, then students may find it difficult to generalise from them (Carless et al., 2006).
Many of the problems with feedback are related to how it is written and how students are helped to engage with it and the following list provides suggestions for improvement:·
Schedule an assignment early in a module so students get formative feedback, perhaps using pass / fail to take the pressure off detailed marking procedures;·
Word-processing of feedback means that comments can be emailed to students which can save time. It also allows the use of comment banks which can create the core of effective feedback quickly and allow more time for individualised comment;·
Feedback grids can also speed up the provision of feedback, especially when they are tailored to the assignment; ·
It is important not to overload the student with too much detailed information and certainly not to over-correct written work. Consider writing just three or four comments that would be most helpful to the student in understanding the grade awarded and in improving their future work. At least part of the feedback should build on a positive aspect of the assessed work;·
Care should be taken to align the language of feedback to the mark, avoiding mismatches such as ‘65%, excellent’; ·
Northedge (2003) argues convincingly that tutors and tutor teams need to take care to ensure that the subject discipline language used in assessment documents and in feedback is realistic about how much understanding the students have developed. Helping students to understand terminology and feedback is therefore important;·
Use peer and self-assessment with marking schemes to help students understand the criteria that they are being assessed against and reduce staff marking workloads. Research show that peer assessment can help students understand the standards of their discipline better than anything else (Black et al. 2003) so it is worth explaining this to students and persevering with it;·
Use classroom or on-line activities to help students decipher the feedback they receive and work out what they need to do on future assignments;·
Integrate feedback into your students’ learning record (progress file) by asking them to reflect on feedback as part of an assignment or discuss it with their personal tutor.
There are many other ways of improving the delivery and use of feedback:For example, the companion 'The Busy teacher educator's guide to developing assessment feedback' by Alison Hramiak (Busy Guide - www.escalate.ac.uk/4147) continues this discussion with many practical ideas for increasing learning from feedback.
Information from the SENLEF Project: Student Enhanced Learning through Effective Feedback can be found at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/senlef.htm. A really good short publication by Juwah et al. (2004) combines theoretical information with practical strategies and case studies and can be found at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources.asp?id=353&process=full_record§ion=generic
Diversifying assessment
There are convincing arguments for extending the range of assessment methods used on teacher education programmes.
Firstly conventional assessment methods struggle to assess more than a limited range of skills (Brown et al., 1994). Examinations can encourage inappropriate and last-minute learning and assess low level skills (e.g. memorisation) if they are not carefully planned.
Traditional essays are an accepted method of communication and development of ideas in academia, but we are not preparing people for academia. Assessment of teaching practice is, of course, very well aligned with programme outcomes and there is some value in considering whether ‘authentic’ assessment could be used more widely in teacher education programmes.
For example, an ‘interactive examination’ (Jonsson and Baartman, 2006) attempts to improve the professional validity of an examination. Using a computer, students view 3 short films showing different classroom contexts. They can also access background information and transcripts of the dialogue. They are asked to describe and analyse the situations and recommend how the teachers should act. Once the students have submitted this first stage, they are presented with ‘expert’ solutions. They then have a week to compare their own responses against the ‘expert’ approach, comment on the differences and use that to identify any future learning needs that have emerged from the exercise.
Secondly, a range of assessment provides the opportunity for learning which enhances student employability. Whilst ‘qualified teacher status’ is a necessary condition of employment in teaching, it is not sufficient condition. Research suggests that employers see professional and academic qualifications ‘as the first tick in the box’ (Knight & Yorke, 2003). They are more interested in what are called ‘soft skills’ - Can candidates manage their own workload, communicate well, learn new things independently, solve problems, instigate change if needed and work effectively with the rest of the team. We need to consider how well our assessments develop and test such attributes.
Different styles and formats of assessment advantage some students in relation to others and therefore providing a range of assessment methods, or a choice of alternatives for a given assignment, can be seen as an inclusive approach to assessment design.
Finally, Struyven et al. (2002:4-5) reported that students are generally positive about ‘alternative’ assessments. That is where assessment was integrated with the teaching, where tasks were authentic and meaningful and where students were ‘involved as active and informed participants’.
Examples of innovative assessment in teacher education
An interesting and reflective account of using a simulation, teaching scenarios and peer assessment by Hildebrand (2004) includes exact details of all the assessment tasks and marking schemes.
Fung (2006) describes and evaluates the use of portfolio assessments in in-service teacher education. The article provides a useful list of other references concerned with portfolio assessment in teacher education.
Doig and Groves (2004) discuss an excellent innovation in the assessment of students learning to teach primary mathematics. The assessment regime used team and individual work to focus students on the integration of theory with classroom practice and to promote deep understanding of children’s ways of understanding mathematics. It involved students in interviewing pupils and planning tasks aimed at meeting the ‘mathematical needs’ of virtual children.
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1b/bc/c2.pdf
Links to examples and further advice:
There are many sources of information on planning good assessment and specific types of assessment. For further information, try:
Contacting the Education Subject Centre, ESCalate www.escalate.ac.uk or searching their website.
The Higher Education Academy publishes ‘Assessment: a guide for lecturers’ which includes a useful list of different assessment methods and what sort of outcomes they can assess. Go to: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources.asp?process=full_record§ion=generic&id=3
The Higher Education Academy also produces many resources on assessment. Go to www.heacademy.ac.uk and use their search engine to get to the assessment topics that you are interested in.
There is also a book available which covers all stages in the assessment cycle from assessment design to examination board. It includes reviews of the evidence coupled with practical advice for staff teaching in higher education: Bloxham, S & Boyd, P (2007) Developing effective assessment in higher education: a practical guide Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
References
Anderson, L.W., and Krathwohl, D.R. (2001) A taxonomy of learning, teaching and assessing: a revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
Anderson, L.W. (2003) Classroom Assessment : Enhancing the Quality of Teacher Decision Making. E-Book: Mahwah, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Angelo, T.A. and Cross, K.P. (1993) Classroom Assessment Techniques. 2nd edn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Biggs, J.B. (2003) Teaching for Quality Learning at University. 2nd edn. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998) Assessment and classroom learning, Assessment in Education, 5 (1):7-74.
Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C. Marshall, B and Wiliam, D. (2003) Assessment for Learning: putting it into practice. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Boud, D. and Falchikov, N. (2006) Aligning assessment with long term learning, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 31 (4):399-413.
Brown, S., Rust, C. and Gibbs, G. (1994) Strategies for diversifying assessment. Oxford: OCSD.
Carless, D., Joughin, G, and Mok, M.M.C. (2006) Learning-oriented assessment: principles and practice, Assessment and evaluation in Higher Education, 31 (4):395-398.
Doig, B and Groves, S (2004) Assessment as a strategic tool for enhancing learning in teacher education: a case study. Deakin University (accessed 24/10/07)http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1b/bc/c2.pdf
Earl, L.M. (2003) Assessment as Learning. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.
Elton, L. and Johnston, B. (2002) Assessment in Universities: A critical review of research. 1st edn. York: Higher Education Academy.
Entwistle, N.J. (1997) Contrasting Perspectives on Learning, in F. Marton, D.Hounsell, and N.J. Entwistle, (eds) The Experience of Learning: Implications for teaching and studying in higher education, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press:3-38.
Entwistle, N.J. and Entwistle, A. (1997) Revision and the experience of understanding, in F. Marton, D. Hounsell, and N.J. Entwistle, (eds) The Experience of Learning: Implications for teaching and studying in higher education. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.:145-155.
Entwistle, N.J., Hounsell, D., Macaulay, C., Situnayake, G and Tait, H. (1989) The Performance of Electrical Engineers in Scottish Higher Education. Edinburgh: Centre for Research on Learning and Instruction, Department of Education, University of Edinburgh.
Falchikov, N. (2005) Improving assessment through student involvement. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Fung, Y (2006) Portfolio assessment in an in-service teacher education course. The Open University of Hong Kong. http://www.aare.edu.au/06pap/fun06265.pdf (accessed 25/10/07)
Gibbs, G. (1995) Assessing student centred courses. Oxford: OCSD.
Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2004-5) Conditions under which assessment supports student learning, Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1 (1):3-31 http://www.glos.ac.uk/shareddata/dms/2B70988BBCD42A03949CB4F3CB7A516.pdf Accessed 29.10.07
Hildebrand, G. (2004) Assessing assessment in teacher education coursework, Paper presented at the annual conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Melbourne, December, 2004, available at http://www.aare.edu.au/04pap/hil04993.pdf, accessed 29.10.07.
Hounsell, D. (2006) Towards more sustainable feedback to students. Paper presented to the Northumbria EARLI SIG Assessment Conference, Darlington, 29th August - 1st September.
Jonsson, A. and Baartman, L.K.J. (2006) Estimating the quality of new modes of assessment: The case of the 'interactive examination' for teachercompetency. Paper presented to the Northumbria EARLI SIG Assessment Conference, Darlington, 29th August - 1st September.
Juwah, C., et.al. (2004) Enhancing Student Learning through Effective Formative Feedback. York: Higher Education Academy.
Klenowski, V. and Elwood, J. (2002) Creating communities of shared practice: the challenges of assessment use in learning and teaching, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 27 (3):243-256.
Knight, P.T. (2000) The Value of a Programme-wide Approach to Assessment, 25 (3):237-251.
Knight, P.T. and Yorke, M. (2003) Assessment, Learning and Employability. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Kynch (2005) Dealing with and dodging difficulties: a case study approach to formative and summative assessment in student teacher placements in school’ Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University College Dublin, 7-10 September http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/143994.doc (accessed 23/10/07)
McNair, S (2000) Holding up the mirror: classroom assessment techniques in an graduate early childhood teacher education programme http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/16/a0/5d.pdf (accessed 23/10/07)
Morgan, A. and Beatty, L. (1997) The World of the Learner, in F. Marton, D. Hounsell, and N.J. Entwistle, (eds) The Experience of Learning. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.
Nicol, D. and Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006) Rethinking formative assessment in HE: a theoretical model and seven principles of good feedback practice. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/ourwork/tla/web0015_rethinking_formative_assessment_in_he (accessed 29.10.07) - the 7 principles can be accessed at:http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/learning/assessment/senlef/principles (Accessed 29.10.07)
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Understanding Assessments

A very useful link to understanding assessments

http://www.netskills.ac.uk/content/projects/jisc-academy-harnessing-assessment/understanding-assessment-video.html

Digital Stories

A great learning tool, but so very time consuming for students to produce.

Personality and HE teaching/Learning

Knowing how my personality can impinge upon my teaching, but also knowing about the many different personalities I would be engaging in any one lecture was eye-opening. To learn that in most cases we might only engage 2.5% of the class was shocking, and really pushed me to think about how I could adapt my teahcing to reahc out to as many students as possible.

This was about being creative, flexible in how I teach and the different activities I use to engage different sets of learners.

I have begun to seriously think about the importance of some of this information for my own students, and wonder how useful it would be for students in level 4 to know a bit more about thier personality and how they learn. I might in the future include a quick personality and learning activitiy with first year students during module introductions, to get them thinking about how they learn and how they might have to adapt aspects of their life to better accomodate their learning.

Learning about my own teaching style

This was hugely beneficial. To have the opportunity to get feedback on my delivery was nerve wrecking to say the least, but it was a great way of knowing what I was doing well and what I could do better. It is a key part of self-development, and as lecturers we don't have the answers to everything, we too are engaged in a process of learning.

I've learned about the following:

a) Ways to engage learners in deep-learning and the importance of deep learning, as opposed to surface leanring

b) Importance of demanding student engagement and active participation in lectures and seminars (teaching is not and should not be about presenting information, students are active constructive political actors and not passive consumers of knowledge)

c) Importance of good logical planning which ensures constructive alignment between leanring activities, outcomes and assessment (this isn't about setting up performativity of student, certainly ot everything in HE is or should be assessment driven!)

Reflecting on the PGCHE so far...

The PGCHE course is designed to help develop the professional teaching skills of those working within the higher education sector. At Gloucestershire University this course has engaged learners in a range of desk-based, collaborative, empirical and online activities to nurture and strengthen a range of professional (and transferable skills) needed for effective teaching and for communicating to/with a student audience.

Personally, the experience so far has been very enlightening. I have enjoyed the lectures which certainly add to my knowledge of how to teach, how to inspire learning, and it makes me think about the kinds of learning I am trying to evoke in my learners.

As part of the course, we are expected to participate in an online course (the e-moderating course), which requires us to reflect on what we have learned so far as part of the course. This blog has been set to do precisely this in three ways:

a) reflect on positive learning experiences that will contribute enormously to my own teaching and learning skills, and
b) reflect on difficulties and challenges I have faced/or had to overcome, and how I have managed to deal with these.