Assessment and feedback

1. Assessment and feedback Principles, practice and technologies

2. DECISION TREE Give choice of topic, method, criteria, weighting or timing of assessments Deliver high quality feedback Help clarify good performance Assessment and Feedback Provide opportunities to act on feedback Encourage interaction and dialogue around learning Development of self-assessment and reflection Encourage time and effort on challenging tasks

3. Help clarify good performance (goals, criteria, standards) • Do your students understand the assessment criteria that you use?  Do they understand the standards required to achieve a particular grade for each criterion or overall?  Do you discuss these with them before they start the task?  If you do, are the students able to state these in their own words? • Research has shown that students who engage with assessment criteria and standards are more likely to be able to manage their own learning.  For example, Rust et al. (2003) found that by working with students in their first term on assessment, assessment criteria and marking that there was a significant increase in the marks in the final assessment, compared with students who had not taken part in the exercise. LEARN MORE Return to top

4. Help clarify good performance (goals, criteria, standards) Return to top

5. Encourage 'time and effort' on challenging learning tasks Are your assessments designed to encourage students to work in and out of class throughout the semester or year?  Can the students see the relevance of the assessment task – is it an authentic assessment? Spreading activities either as discrete pieces of work or building up to make a single piece of work throughout the module brings balance to the student workload and can encourage deep learning.  This approach also provides opportunities for ongoing feedback.  Even if marks are attached to the individual elements (summative assessment) the activities will also be formative assessments, because students should be able to build on the feedback provided for the next or subsequent stages or elements. Although a particularly useful approach to use with first year students, this can be extended to students in other years. LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO DO THIS Return to top

6. Encourage 'time and effort' on challenging learning tasks Return to top

7. Deliver high quality feedback What kind of feedback do you provide?  How does it encourage students to assess and correct themselves? We all learn from feedback and it is important that students have the opportunity to learn from the feedback provided by staff.  That learning, however, may be enhanced by high quality feedback.  When students receive poor quality feedback they are less likely to act on it.  The issues that students have with feedback include the time it takes to receive feedback after submitting the work, understanding the feedback that has been given – this could be the language used, the handwriting, or not understanding the abbreviated shorthand. or the grade. If students only get a summary sheet are the comments explicit enough for the student to act on them intelligently – eg does a student know what ‘your spelling needs some attention’ or ‘much of this work was irrelevant’ mean?  Feedback should also be about feedforward - what can the student do next time to improve their performance. LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO DO THIS Return to top

8. Deliver high quality feedback Return to top

9. Provide opportunities to act on feedback One of the issues frequently raised by staff is that students do not use the feedback given.  There are a number of reasons why this might be including students’ perception of feedback coming too late, the module is over, and/or the mark achieved is acceptable to them.  Students need to use both formative and summative feedback as a means of improving their future performance.  Other than via the next piece of assessed work, do you provide students with opportunities to internalise and act on the feedback given?  Equally, students will not be able to action the feedback if they do not understand it – this usually comes down to the terminology used by the assessor. LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO DO THIS Return to top

10. Provide opportunities to act on feedback Return to top

11. Encourage interaction and dialogue around learning Dialogue between students and between staff and students plays an important role in student success.  Students need to engage in dialogue around feedback.  Large first year classes make one-to-one interaction between staff and students difficult, but meaningful dialogue can take place between students.   LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO DO THIS Return to top

12. Encourage interaction and dialogue around learning Return to top

13. Development of self-assessment and reflection If students are to acquire the skills of regulating their own learning and development they need to be able to self-assess their work.  Providing students with opportunities to engage with self-assessment in a formal manner is likely to develop more autonomous learners and lead to greater engagement with the criteria and standards. LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO DO THIS Return to top

14. Development of self-assessment and reflection Return to top

15. Give choice of topic, method, criteria, weighting or timing of assessments Being able to manage and prioritise their work is a key graduate skill.  Providing students with opportunities to make decisions about which topic to do, when to hand work in, the weighting of an assessment or part of it enables them to practise this skill.  For example, students often have a choice of topic to, and some online testing allows them to take the test at some point during a specified period. LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW TO DO THIS Return to top

16. Give choice of topic, method, criteria, weighting or timing of assessments Return to top

17. Computer Assisted Assessment Return to top

18. Video Screen capture with or without audio Return to top

19. Audio Return to top

20. Annotated text – can be used in conjunction with video screen capture Return to top

21. Electronic Voting System/Personal Response System (EVS/PRS) Return to top

22. Narrated presentations Return to top

23. Video – of practical activities or lecture Return to top

24. Wiki/discussion forum/blog Return to top

25. e-Learning templates Return to top

26. QOL assignment tool Return to top