This document discusses the implications of TESTA (Thinking about Education, Students, Teaching and Assessment) for curriculum design. It addresses some common problems with assessment and feedback such as an over-reliance on summative assessments, lack of formative feedback, and confusion about learning goals and standards. The document presents case studies of programmes that have successfully implemented more formative assessment and feedback. It also provides principles and tactics for using formative assessment, improving feedback dialogues between students and lecturers, and helping students better understand expectations and criteria. Overall, the document argues that applying TESTA concepts can help rebalance assessment, strengthen connections across modules, and ultimately enhance student learning outcomes.

1. Implications of TESTA for
curriculum design
@solentlearning
@tansyjtweets
Tansy Jessop
SLTI
17 January 2018

2. Your learning outcomes

3. What you know about TESTA

4. The challenges of A&F

5. Why assessment & feedback?
1) Assessment drives what students pay attention
to, and defines the actual curriculum (Ramsden
2003).
2) Feedback is the single most important factor in
learning (Hattie 2009; Black and Wiliam 1998).

7. Mixed methods approach
Programme
Team
Meeting
Assessment
Experience
Questionnaire
(AEQ)
TESTA
Programme
Audit
Student
Focus Groups

8. TESTA….
“…is a way of thinking
about assessment and
feedback”
Graham Gibbs

9. Curriculum design problems TESTA
addresses

10. Curriculum paradigms
PRODUCT: structuring and managing content (WHAT)
PROCESS: the lived experience (HOW)
PRAXIS: wider purpose of HE, social justice, equality (WHY)

11. Curriculum (n) running, chariot, course

12. The modular degree

13. IKEA 101: great for flat-pack furniture but..

14. …not so good for ‘slow learning’
• Too much summative
• Too little formative
• Connections not clear
• Promotes disposable learning
• Reinforces content-heavy
curricula

15. TESTA seems to improve students’
perceptions of A&F…
60%
65%
70%
75%
80%
85%
90%
95%
Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 OS
AVERAGENSSSCORES
COMPARISON OF 32 PROGS IN 13 UNIVERSITIES WITH SECTOR SCORES
NSS 2015 SCORES TESTA SCORES

16. The brief
TESTA
2017/18
Courses TESTA
Audit
AEQ Focus
Group
Team
meeting
SOMAT Computer Games Development
Film and Television
Performance
Media Technology
Media Production
February
SHSS Social Work
Psychology
Fitness
February
SADF Fashion Styling
Architectural Technology
Construction Management
February
WSMSE Engineering
Maritime Business
February
SBLC Business Management
Marketing
Finance and Accounting

17. TESTA tactics for problems with
1. High summative and low formative diets
2. Disconnected feedback
3. Confusion about goals and standards

18. TESTA definitions
Summative:
graded assessment which counts towards the degree
Formative:
Does not count: ungraded, required task with
feedback

19. 1. High summative: low formative
• High summative on UK, Irish, NZ and Indian
degrees
• Low formative: ratio of 1:8 formative to
summative
• Formative weakly practised and understood

20. Assessment Arms Race

21. Your experience
Which of these
quotations resonates,
and why?
Any ideas to address the
problem?

22. A lot of people don’t do wider
reading. You just focus on your
essay question.
In Weeks 9 to 12 there is hardly
anyone in our lectures. I'd rather
use those two hours of lectures
to get the assignment done.
It’s been non-stop
assignments, and I’m now
free of assignments until
the exams – I’ve had to
rush every piece of work
I’ve done.
CONSEQUENCES
OF HIGH
SUMMATIVE

23. 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.
WHAT ABOUT FORMATIVE?

24. If there weren’t loads
of other assessments,
I’d do it.
It’s good to know you’re
being graded because
you take it more
seriously.
BUT… If there are no actual
consequences of not doing
it, most students are going
to sit in the bar.
The lecturers do formative
assessment but we don’t get
any feedback on it.

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

26. So, how do we do formative?
Three case studies of
successful formative
What made them
work?

27. Case Study 1
• Systematic reduction of summative across
whole business school
• Systematic ramping up of formative
• All working to similar script
• Systematic shift, experimentation, less risky
together

28. Case Study 2
• Problem: silent seminar, students not reading
• Public platform blogging
• Current academic texts
• In-class
• Threads and live discussion
• Linked to summative

29. Case study 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVFwQzlVFy0

30. Principles of formative

31. How to encourage formative assessment
Go to www.menti.com and use the code 49 19 74
Choose the three which you think work best

32. Encouraging formative

33. 2. Disconnected feedback

34. System-wide problems
• Modular structures impede feedback
• Students don’t feel known
• There is very little formative feedback
• Lecturers do too much judging; students too little

35. The feedback is
generally focused
on the module
Because it’s at the end
of the module, it doesn’t
feed into our future
work.
If It’s difficult because your
assignments are so detached
from the next one you do for
that subject. They don’t
relate to each other.
I read it and think “Well,
that’s fine but I’ve already
handed it in now and got the
mark. It’s too late”.
STRUCTURAL

36. It was like ‘Who’s
Holly?’ It’s that
relationship where
you’re just a student.
Because they have to mark so
many that our essay becomes
lost in the sea that they have
to mark.
Here they say ‘Oh yes, I don’t
know who you are. Got too
many to remember, don’t
really care, I’ll mark you on
your assignment’.
RELATIONAL

37. An impoverished dialogue
The many diverse
expressions of
dissatisfaction with
feedback can be taken as
symptoms of an
impoverished and
fractured dialogue
David Nicol 2010

38. A feedback dialogue

39. Irretrievable breakdown…
Your essay lacked structure and
your referencing is problematic
Your classes are boring and I
don’t really like you 

40. Ways to be dialogic
• Conversation: who starts the dialogue?
• Cycles of reflection across modules
• Quick generic feedback
• Feedback synthesis tasks
• Peer feedback (especially on formative)
• Technology: audio, screencast and blogging
• From feedback as ‘telling’…
• … to feedback as asking questions

41. Students feedback to us

42. Students to lecturers:
Critical Incident Questionnaire
Stephen Brookfield’s Critical Incident Questionnaire http://bit.ly/1loUzq0

43. Theme 3: Confusion about goals and
standards
• Consistently low scores on the AEQ for clear
goals and standards
• Alienation from the tools, especially criteria
and guidelines
• Symptoms: perceptions of marker variation,
unfair standards and inconsistencies in practice

44. We’ve got two
tutors- one marks
completely differently
to the other and it’s
pot luck which one
you get.
They read the essay and then
they get a general impression,
then they pluck a mark from
the air.
It’s like Russian
roulette – you may
shoot yourself and
then get an A1.
They have different
criteria, they build up their
own criteria.

45. There are criteria, but I find them really
strange. There’s “writing coherently,
making sure the argument that you
present is backed up with evidence”.

46. Implicit
Criteria
Explicit
Written
I justify
Co-creation
and
participation
Active
engagement
by students

47. Taking action: internalising goals and
standards
• Regular calibration exercises
• Discussion and dialogue
• Discipline specific criteria (no cut and paste)
Lecturers
• Rewrite/co-create criteria
• Marking exercises
• Discussing exemplars
Lecturers
and students
• Enter secret garden - peer review
• Engage in drafting processes
• Self-reflection
Students

48. The TESTA Effect
• Rebalancing formative and summative
• Greater connections across modules
• Better sequencing and progression of
assessment across the programme
• New approaches to formative, including more
authentic assessment
• Revives and refreshes curriculum design
• Improved student learning and NSS scores.

49. From this educational paradigm…

50. Transmission Model

51. Social Constructivist Model

52. References
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Press.
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assessment. Educational Development. 17(3), 12-15. SEDA.
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design’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(6), pp. 698–712.
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and Teaching in Higher Education. 1(1): 3-31.
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