Engaging Students in Enhancing Assessment : a Teesside Perspective

1
Engaging Students in Enhancing Assessment a
Teesside Perspective

• Professor K L Oglesby
• Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor
• Angela Morgan
• Assistant Director (Quality)
• HEA 5 February 2009

2

• Research Project to investigate the impact of
  assessment practices on student learning
• Learning and Teaching Exchange with staff and
  students

3
Research Project

• Assessment Working Group (AWG)
• Remit
• review existing assessment practice
• identify good assessment practice
• research to explore good practice
• within the institution
• Investigate the student perspective of assessment
  practices

4
Research Questions

• What is the impact of assessment
• practices on student learning?
• how do students view the relationship between the
  assessment task and the learning outcomes of the
  module?
• how do formal and informal formative
• tasks and feedback influence learning
• and personal development?
• what factors do lecturers take into
• account when designing the module assessment
  strategy.

5
Research Methods

• 1 case study module per school
• 3 levels, varied assessment strategies
• Pilot interviews with postgraduate
• students (n9)
• Student Experiences with Assessment Questionnaire
  (n263) 63 response.
• assessment and learning
• time and effort distribution
• feedback and formative assessment
• learning outcomes
• PDP/PDE
• Interviews and focus groups with staff
• (n10) and students (n42) from case
• study modules

6
Feedback
Students were very positive about the impact that
feedback could have on their learning,
particularly feedback received in formative
tasks.
These findings contradict some studies which have
found that feedback may be ignored, or does not
influence students performance. (Crisp, 2007
Pickford Brown, 2006 Taras, 2002)
7
Learning Teaching Exchange

• - a series of lunchtime workshop sessions
  designed to promote and encourage dialogue
  between students and academic staff about a range
  of learning and teaching issues.
• the sessions drew together staff and students
  from a range of disciplines to discuss their
  experiences, and share ideas and good practice.
• topical issues discussed timing and amount of
  assessments, academic language in feedback,
  individual feedback, consistency, communication
  and relevance of untimely feedback.

8
Views of Good Feedback

• Staff
• good communication
• students should seek more feedback
• recognition of informal feedback
• could give more verbal encouragement
• more opportunities to give feedback

• Students
• good communication
• reinforce what is well done
• academic language appropriate to level and
  content
• explain academic terms and elements of marking
  criteria
• more opportunities to receive feedback
• staff should be more available

9

• Characteristics of Good Feedback
• Common suggestions from students
• individualised
• verbal
• timely
• specific suggestions on how to improve, even for
  high achievers
• consistency between academic staff
• skills feedback (e.g. referencing)
• reinforce areas done well

• Forms of Good Feedback
• There were many types of feedback which students
  found useful
• peer feedback
• early indicators of pass or fail
• audio feedback (i.e. Podcasts)
• exam feedback
• annotations on scripts
• common errors fed back to whole class
• feedback banks
• feedback crib sheets