1. An evidenced-informed approach to
enhancing programme-wide
assessment
TESTA to FASTECH
Dr Tansy Jessop & Yaz El Hakim, University of Winchester
Professor Paul Hyland, Bath Spa University
JISC Online Annual: 22 November 2011

2. Pre-Conference Activities
Pre-reading:
1) Gibbs & Simpson (2004) Conditions under which
assessment supports student learning.
http://www2.glos.ac.uk/offload/tli/lets/lathe/issue1/articles/simpson.pdf
2) Gibbs, G. & Dunbar-Goddet, H. (2007) The effects of
programme assessment environments on student learning.
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/teachingandresearch/gibbs_0506.pdf
3) Jessop, T., Smith, C. & El Hakim, Y. (2011) Programme-
wide assessment: doing ‘more with less’ from the TESTA
NTFS project. HEA Assessment & Feedback Briefing Paper.
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/assessment/2011_Winchester_SS_Briefing_Report.pdf

3. 1) What conditions do you see as most
important in student learning (Paper 1)?
2) What is your response to the idea of
institutional and programme ‘assessment
environments’ which influence assessment
and feedback patterns? (Paper 2)
3) What are the main challenges and benefits of
addressing assessment patterns on a whole
programme? (Paper 3)
Pre-conference questions

4. TESTA ‘Cathedrals Group’ Universities

5. Why TESTA has been compelling
1) The research methodology
2) It is conceptually grounded in assessment and
feedback literature
3) It’s about improving student learning
4) It is programmatic in focus
5) The change process is dialogic & developmental

6. Presentation Overview
1) The Research Methodology (Tansy)
2) Case study as a compelling narrative (Tansy)
3) Trends in assessment & feedback (Tansy)
Q&A
4) The student effort narrative (Yaz)
5) The bewildered student narrative (Yaz)
6) Systems-failure on feedback narrative (Yaz)
Q&A
7) A way forward: FASTECH (Paul)

7. Two Paradigms
Transmission
• Expert to novice
• Planned, packaged & ‘delivered’
• Feedback given by experts
• Feedback received by novices
• One way traffic
• Very little dialogue
• Emphasis on measurement
• Competition
Metaphor = mechanical system
Social constructivist model
• Participatory, democratic
• Messy and process-oriented
• Peer review
• Self-evaluation
• Social process
• Dialogue
• Emphasis on learning
• Collaboration
Metaphor = the journey

8. 1) Research Methodology
• triangulates data from three sources
• presented in a case study
• complex, ambiguous, textured
• open to discussion - not the ‘final word’
• ‘before’ and ‘after’ data

9. Programme Audit
• How much summative assessment
• How much formative (reqd, formal, feedback)
• How many varieties of assessment
• Proportion exams to coursework
• Word count of written feedback
• How much ‘formal’ oral feedback
• Criteria, learning outcomes, course docs

10. Assessment Experience Questionnaire
version 3.3
• 28 questions
• 5 point Likert scale where 5 = strongly agree
• 9 scales and one overall satisfaction question
• Scales link to conditions of learning
• Examples:
– quantity and distribution of effort;
– use of feedback;
– quantity and quality of feedback;
– clear goals and standards

11. Focus groups
• What kinds of assessment
• How assessment influences your study
behaviour
• Whether you know what quality work looks like
• What feedback is like and how you use it

12. Research Methodology
ASSESSMENT
EXPERIENCE
QUESTIONNAIRE
(AEQ n= 1200+)
FOCUS GROUPS
(n=50 with
301 students)
PROGRAMME AUDIT
(n=22)
Programme
Team
Meeting

13. 2) The cases are surprising, complex, puzzling
Here is one case from the TESTA data……

14. Case Study 1
• Lots of coursework (47 tasks)
• Very varied forms (15 types of assessment)
• Very few exams (1 in every 10)
• Masses of written feedback on assignments
(15,412 words)
• Learning outcomes and criteria clearly
specified
….looks like a ‘model’ assessment environment

15. But students:
• Don’t put in a lot of effort and distribute their
effort across few topics
• Don’t think there is a lot of feedback or that it
very useful, and don’t make use of it
• Don’t think it is at all clear what the goals and
standards are
……what is going on?

16. Your best guesses
A. Variety of assessment confuses students
B. Assessment in ‘bunched’ at certain times
C. The feedback is too late to be of any use
D. Teachers don’t share a common standard
E. Other
• Select your response from the buttons (A B C D E) at
the bottom-right of the list of participants
• Type any additional comments into the text-chat

17. • Teachers work hard, students less so.
• Feedback is too late to be useful
• Teachers have varied standards
• Students see feedback as ‘modular’
• Variety confuses students
• Formative tasks are assigned low priority
• Summative assessment drives effort
What is going on?

18. 3) Trends in assessment and feedback
• High summative assessment, low formative
• High variety (average 11; range 7-17)
• Written feedback (ave7,153; r = 2,869-15,412 )
• Low oral feedback (average 6 hours)
• Watertight documents, tacit standards
• Huge institutional and programme variations:
o formative: summative ratios (134:1 cf 1:10)
o oral feedback (37 minutes to 30 hours)

19. Q&A

20. 4) The effort narrative. TESTA data shows that:
• average of 12 summative per year
• 24 teaching weeks, one every two weeks
• summative tasks end-loaded & bunched
• leading to patchy effort
• and surface learning
• with an average three formative tasks a year….

21. The more you write the better you become at it…
and if we’ve only written 40 pieces over three years
that’s not a lot.
So you could have a great time doing nothing until
like a month before Christmas and you’d suddenly
panic. I prefer steady deadlines, there’s a gradual
move forward, rather than bam!
In the second year, I kept getting such good marks I
thought “If I’m getting this much without putting in
much effort that means I could do so much better if
I actually did do the hours” but it just goes up and
down really.

22. TESTA plus HEPI quiz
Which one is false?
A) 1 in 3 UK students study for 20 hours or less a week
B) Students on only 1 out of 7 TESTA programmes agreed
that they were working hard
C) Students work hardest when there is a high volume of
formative assessment and oral feedback
D) Students work hardest when there is a high volume of
summative assessment and written feedback
E) 1 in 3 UK students undertake > 6 hours of paid work a
week
Select your response from the buttons (A B C D E) at the
bottom-right of the list of participants

23. Chat box
What ideas might encourage students to put in
effort regularly on degree programmes?
• Type your responses in the text chat

24. Strategies to encourage student effort
Choose your top strategy to encourage effort:
A) Raise expectations in first year
B) Require more formative assessment
C) Link formative and summative tasks
D) Use more peer and self assessment
E) Design small, frequent assessed tasks
Select your response from the buttons (A B C D E) at the
bottom-right of the list of participants

25. Technologies that may help…
What technologies might work to
spur on regular and distributed
effort?
Type your responses in the text
chat

26. 5) The baffled student narrative
o The language of written criteria is difficult
to understand
o feedback does not always refer to criteria
o students feel that marking standards vary
and are subjective and arbitrary
o students sometimes use criteria
instrumentally

27. I’m not a marker so I can’t really think like them... I don’t
have any idea of why it got that mark.
They have different criteria, build up their own criteria.
Some of them will mark more interested in how you word
things.
You know who are going to give crap marks and who are
going to give decent marks.

28. Chat Box
What strategies might help students to
internalise goals and standards?
• Type your responses in the text chat

29. Strategies to help students know what
‘good’ is
Which strategy do you think helps most?
A) Showing students models of good work
B) Peer marking workshops
C) Lots of formative tasks with feedback
D) Plenty of interactive dialogue about standards
E) Self assessment activities
Select your response from the buttons (A B C D E) at the
bottom-right of the list of participants

30. 6) System-wide features make it difficult for students to
use feedback and act on it
o feedback often arrives after a module, or after
submission of the next task
o tasks are not sequenced or connected across
modules, leading to lack of feed forward
o students sometimes receive grades electronically
before their feedback becomes available on
parchment in a dusty office
o technology has led to some depersonalised cut and
pasting

31. It’s rare that you’ll get it in time to help you on that same module.
t’s rare that you’ll get it in time to help you on that same module.
You know that twenty other people have got the same sort of
comment.
I look on the Internet and say ‘Right, that’s my mark. I don’t need
to know too much about why I got it’.
I only apply feedback to that module because I have this fear
that if I transfer it to other modules it’s not going to transfer
smoothly.
You can’t carry forward most of the comments because you
might have an essay first and your next assignment might be a
poster.

32. Changes through TESTA
Structural
Thematic
Pedagogic
Module

33. Types of changes
1. Reduced summative
2. Increased formative assessment
3. Streamlined variety
4. Raised expectations of student
workload
5. Sequenced and linked tasks across
modules
6. Practice based changes

34. www.testa.ac.uk

35. Q&A

36. FASTECH
Feedback and Assessment for Students with Technology
What is FASTECH?
• R&D Project (3 yrs): ‘R’ primarily with TESTA tools; ‘D’ in disciplines and universities.
• approach: teaching teams with students interpret ‘R’ data to determine goals of ‘D’.
• activities: to address QA and QE issues, optimize sector engagement (fastech.ac.uk)
• outputs: R&D findings, experiences & guides by teachers, students, others…
Pragmatic Principles?
• Fast: using readily-available technologies; quick to learn, easy to use …
• Efficient: after start-up period; saves time & effort ( paper), productivity …
• Effective: brings significant learning benefit to students, pedagogic impact …

37. FASTECH: a Pedagogical Goal
Student
baggage …
• all can be
strategic!
and blocks:
• ideas about
roles of S & T
• …
… ability to manage own learning …
In each assessment culture, this entails using
technologies that help promote
transparency & S participation in all processes from
design and management to feedback and revision
(validity, reliability & fairness are not enough)
a reshaping of teacher & student responsibilities
processes that enhance and create new: peer-
learning activities & collaborations (in/out of class);
self & peer assessment; recording, sharing & review
of students’ progress and achievements …
teacher revision of pedagogies, based upon records
of student progress & achievement in learning
attuning of assessment to address individual &
distinctive needs & aspirations …..
Teacher
baggage …
and blocks:
• ideas about role
of assessment
• unsure about
value of feedback
• assessment &
marking conflated
• criteria &
standards
• …

38. Finally,
for an excellent overview
of technologies and pedagogies
JISC, Effective Assessment in a Digital Age. Bristol: HEFCE, 2010.
Available at: www.jisc.ac.uk/digiassess (esp., pp. 14-15, 54-55)
For resources associated with this publication:
www.jisc.ac.uk/assessresource
Please contact us for more info about TESTA and FASTECH:
Tansy.Jessop@winchester.ac.uk
Yassein.El-Hakim@winchester.ac.uk
p.hyland@bathspa.ac.uk
Websites: www.testa.ac.uk & www.fastech.ac.uk (from January 2012)
Thank You

39. DISCUSSION
to be continued in the conference discussion forum
How do you think using technology in A&F will
improve students’ learning?

40. References
Black, P. & D. William (1998) ‘Assessment and Classroom Learning’,
Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice. 5(1): 7-74.
Bloxham, S. & P. Boyd (2007) Planning a programme assessment strategy.
Chapter 11 (157-175) in Developing Effective Assessment in Higher Education.
Berkshire. Open University Press.
Boud, D. (2000) Sustainable Assessment: Rethinking assessment for the
learning society, Studies in Continuing Education, 22: 2, 151 — 167.
Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004) Conditions under which assessment supports
students' learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. 1(1): 3-31.
Gibbs, G., & Dunbar-Goddet, H. (2007) The effects of programme assessment
environments on student learning. Higher Education Academy.
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/ourwork/research/gib
bs_0506.pdf
Gibbs, G. & Dunbar-Goddet, H. (2009). Characterising programme-level
assessment environments that support learning. Assessment & Evaluation in
Higher Education. 34,4: 481-489.

41. Jessop, T., El Hakim, Y. & Gibbs, G. (2011) TESTA: Research inspiring change,
Educational Developments 12 (4). In press.
Jessop, T., McNab, N., and Gubby, L. (2012 forthcoming) Mind the gap: An
analysis of how quality assurance procedures influence programme
assessment patterns. Active Learning in Higher Education. 13(3).
Knight, P.T. and Yorke, M. (2003) Assessment, Learning and Employability.
Maidenhead. Open University Press.
Nicol, D. J. and McFarlane-Dick, D. (2006) Formative Assessment and Self-
Regulated Learning: A Model and Seven Principles of Good Feedback Practice.
Studies in Higher Education. 31(2): 199-218.
Nicol, D. (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback
processes in mass higher education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher
Education, 35: 5, 501 – 517
Sambell, K (2011) Rethinking Feedback in Higher Education. Higher Education
Academy Escalate Subject Centre Publication.