1) The document discusses the importance of formative assessment in student learning by providing feedback to help students improve. However, formative assessment is difficult to implement effectively due to competing demands on students and lecturers. 2) Some reasons formative assessment is challenging include students prioritizing summative assessments that are graded, heavy workloads leaving little time, and a culture focused on marks. 3) Effective formative assessment should be integrated with summative tasks, use authentic assessments, and establish routines to habituate students to feedback.

1. Why formative? What is it? Why
doesn’t it work ? How can we do
formative better?
Dr Tansy Jessop
Head of L&T, University of Winchester
Programme Leaders’ Forum
1 October 2014

2. Bearing the load…
Sisyphus rolls a boulder
up a hill
“an eternity of endless
labour, useless effort and
frustration”
Homer, 8th Century BC

3. 21st century equivalent
“You end up assessing for
assessment’s sake rather than
thinking about what the assessment
is for”.
Programme Leader, Winchester
(2008)

4. Why do formative assessment?
“Feedback is the single most influential factor in
student learning” (Hattie 2009).
“Innovations that include strengthening the practice
of formative assessment produce significant and
often substantial learning gains” (Black and Wiliam,
1998, p.40).

5. Why formative matters
1) Because it provides low-risk, more frequent opportunities
for students to learn from feedback (Sadler, 1989)
2) Because it helps students to fine-tune and understand
requirements and standards (Boud 2000, Nicol, 2006)
3) Because feedback to lecturers from formative tasks helps
to adapt teaching (Hattie, 2009)
4) Because it engages students in cycles of reflection and
collaboration (Biggs 2003; Nicol & McFarlane Dick 2006)
5) Because it encourages and distributes student effort
(Gibbs 2004).

6. Why students say it matters
 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.
 Getting feedback from other students in my class helps. I can relate to
what they’re saying and take it on board. I’d just shut down if I was
getting constant feedback from my lecturer.
 I find more helpful the feedback you get in informal ways week by
week, but there are some people who just hammer on about what will
get them a better mark.

7. Why it matters to students
 He’s such a better essay writer because he’s constantly writing.
And we don’t, especially in the first year when we really don’t have
anything to do. The amount of times formative assignments could
have taken place…
 The more you write the better you become at it. It only comes
through practice and in the end 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!

8. What is formative assessment?

9. Definitions of formative assessment
 “Definitional fuzziness” Mantz Yorke (2003)
 Basic idea is simple – to contribute to student learning
through the provision of information about
performance (Yorke, 2003).
 A fine tuning mechanism for how and what we learn
(Boud 2000)

10. Defining formative (2)
 Formative assessment is concerned with how judgements
about the quality of student responses can be used to
shape and improve students’ competence by short-circuiting
the randomness and inefficiency of trial-and-error
learning” (Sadler, 1989, p.120).
 TESTA – ungraded, required, eliciting feedback

11. Why we struggle to do formative

12. Theory 1: Content drives our view of
curriculum

14. A student’s lecture to professors
The best approach from the student’s perspective is to focus on
concepts. I’m sorry to break it to you, but your students are not
going to remember 90 per cent – possibly 99 per cent – of what
you teach them unless it’s conceptual…. when broad, over-arching
connections are made, education occurs. Most details
are only a necessary means to that end.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-students-lecture-
to-professors/2013238.fullarticle#.U3orx_f9xWc.twitter

15. Theory 2: Summative competes for
time and effort with formative

16. If there weren’t loads of other assessments, I’d do it.
Unless I find it interesting I will rarely do anything else on it
because I haven’t got the time. Even though I haven’t anything
to do, I don’t have the time, I have jobs to do and I have to go to
work and stuff.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t afford to stay here. We’re off to do our
assignment” (Harland, 2014).

17. A Student Effort Graph
Week 6 Week 12
Max effort
Modest Effort
Low Effort
17

18. Theory 3: Students are grades-oriented

19. It’s good to know you’re being graded because you take it more seriously.
I would probably work for tasks, but for a lot of people, if it’s not going to count
towards your degree, why bother?
A lot of people don’t do wider reading. You just focus on your essay question.
I always find myself going to the library and going ‘These are the books related to
this essay’ and that’s it.
Although you learn a lot more than you would if you were revising for an exam,
because you have to do wider research and stuff, you still don’t do research really
unless it’s directly related to essays.

20. Theory 4: Academics have competing
demands

21.  I found the consequence of it not being officially part of the diet being
that a hard core did it and no more.
 At any particular assessment point... somebody in our department
would probably have to read something between 300,000 and 0.5
million words.
 You end up assessing for assessment’s sake rather than thinking about
what the assessment is for.
 We’re finding formative assessment more difficult as the numbers
grow on the courses, and a lot of us now are thinking I can’t do this
because it’s just so much extra time....

22. Summary of TESTA evidence about
missing formative assessment
1) Competes for time and effort with summative
assessment
2) The volume of summative assessment squeezes out
formative
3) Modules and semesters
4) Marks driven culture, weak theory and rationale for
formative among students and lecturers
5) It’s not required.

23. Why summative can’t do the
same job as formative
 Grades …the administrative device that actively diverted
students from really learning anything (Becker, 1968).
 Feedback on summative tasks is more readily dismissed
when there is a grade (Black and William 1998, Orrell 2006,
Taras 2002; 2008).
 Timing of summative tasks, often too late to act on
feedback.

24. Good cop, bad cop?

25. Good cop, bad cop?
 Assessment of, for or as learning
 Different functions, some overlaps
 False dichotomy is unhelpful
 Rebuilding formative-summative relationship
 Linked, integrated, multi-stage assessment

26. Ten principles for making formative
1) Align it with summative tasks – multi-stage, linked,
integrated
2) The value of feedback feeding forward
3) Set formative tasks in the public domain
4) Set the tone in first year
5) Adopt a whole programme approach
6) Habituate students to peer review
7) Taking risks and providing rationale to students
8) Real world tasks, authentic, linked to previous and own
experience
9) Research based tasks
10) Group accountability
work

27. Home-grown examples
 Formative Assessment Triads: MA Education
 Blogging on ITE (BA Primary) modules and American
Studies
 Drafting process on American Studies
 Structured 3:1 process of formative in Sports programme
 Multi-stage formative to summative on Media degrees
 Gamification on Finance, Accounting and Media degrees
 E-portfolio and portfolio examples from Social work and
ITE modules
 Examples of authentic assessment: Problem-based
learning, case studies, scenarios, professional reflections
etc

28. References
Becker, H. (1968) Making the grade: the academic side of college life.
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.
Hattie, J. (2007) The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research. 77(1) 81-112.
Harland, T. et al. (2014) An Assessment Arms Race and its fallout: high-stakes grading and the case for
slow scholarship. Assessment and Evaluation inn Higher Education.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602938.2014.931927
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.
Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. (2013) 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. ifirst.
Jessop, T, McNab, N and Gubby, L. (2012) Mind the gap: An analysis of how quality assurance processes
influence programme assessment patterns. Active Learning in Higher Education. 13(3). 143-154.
Sadler, D.R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems, Instructional Science,
18, 119-144.
Yorke, M. (2003) Formative assessment in higher education: Moves towards theory and the
enhancement of pedagogic practice. Higher Education. 45