The document summarizes the TESTA methodology for improving feedback and assessment in higher education programs. The key issues identified are: (1) modular course designs make feedback less effective by separating assignments and squeezing out formative tasks, (2) the missing relational dimension of anonymous marking in mass higher education, and (3) TESTA program strategies aim to address these by rebalancing formative/summative assessment, using peer/audio/blog feedback, and shifting from a transmission to social constructivist educational model.

1. Rebuilding the broken feedback
relationship through TESTA’s
programme approach
Tansy Jessop
Enhancing Feedback in Y1 Symposium
Maynooth University, Dublin
#y1feedback @tansyjtweets

2. Powerful feedback
• Think of a time you received powerful feedback.
• What three words spring to mind about that
feedback?
• Go to www.menti.com and use the code 48 01 25

4. The TESTA Methodology
Programme
Team
Meeting
Assessment
Experience
Questionnaire
(AEQ)
TESTA
Programme
Audit
Student
Focus Groups

5. Based on assessment principles
• ‘Time-on-task’ (Gibbs 2004)
• Challenging and high expectations (Chickering and
Gamson 1987)
• Internalising goals and standards (Sadler 1989; Nicol
and McFarlane-Dick 2006)
• Prompt, detailed, specific, developmental, dialogic
feedback (Gibbs 2004; Nicol 2010)
• Deep learning (Marton and Saljo 1976).

6. Sustained growth

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

8. TESTA reveals the whole elephant…

9. Key findings from TESTA
1. Modular design makes feedback less
effective
2. Modules squeeze out formative tasks and
feedback
3. There is a missing relational dimension

10. Defining the terms
• Summative assessment carries a grade which
counts toward the degree classification.
• Formative assessment does not count
towards the degree (either pass/fail or a
grade), elicits comments and is required to be
done by all students.

11. Modular design problems
• High summative assessment loads
Range of UK summative assessment 12-227 over
three years
• Trivialises feedback for students
• Burdensome for lecturers
1. Modular design problems

12. Does IKEA 101 work for complex learning?

13. Content Vs Concepts?

14. 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-rofessors/2013238.fullarticle#.U3orx_f9xWc.twitter
A Student’s lecture to her professor

15. Take five: in pairs
• Choose a student quote
that strikes you.
• What is the key issue?
• What strategies might
address this issue?

16. What students say…
The feedback is generally focused on the module.
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.
Because it’s at the end of the module, it doesn’t feed
into our future work.
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”.

17. Strategies to connect feedback
• Cyclical coversheets with self-evaluation
• Multi-stage tasks with feedforward
• Feedback synthesis tasks
• Curriculum design strategies

18. • Low formative: summative ratio 1:8 on 73 UK
degrees
• Very few students describe encountering formative
tasks.
• Formative feedback is rare, yet brings ‘significant
learning gains’ (Black and Wiliam 1998).
2. Modules squeezes out formative
tasks

19. What students say about barriers to
formative
• If there weren’t loads of other assessments, I’d
do it.
• 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.

20. What TESTA programmes have done…
• Rebalance formative and summative
• Formative as required gateway tasks
• Multi-stage linked formative-summative
• Public domain tasks
• Authentic tasks

21. 3. Missing relational dimension
Mass higher education
Huge marking loads
Marker = teacher?
Risk-averse quality apparatus
Anonymous marking

22. What students say
Because they have to mark so many that our essay
becomes lost in the sea that they have to mark.
It was like ‘Who’s Holly?’ It’s that relationship
where you’re just a student.
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’.

23. Take five: in pairs
• What is your view of
giving personal
feedback?
• What challenges does it
pose?

24. A quick case study
I’m baffled.
Students love my
feedback but
they are a voice
in the
wilderness…

25. TESTA programme strategies
• Formative feedback – informal, immediate,
conversational
• Peer feedback
• Audio and screencast feedback
• Blogging on academic texts with informal threads
• Developmental feedback (measuring performance
against past performance)

26. Shifting the educational paradigm
from…

27. Transmission Model

28. Social Constructivist Model

29. References
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Barlow, A. and Jessop, T. (2016) “You can’t write a load of rubbish”: why blogging works as formative assessment. Educational Developments 17(3)
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712
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Published Online 27 August 2014
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assessment patterns. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 39(1) 73-88.
Nicol, D. (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher education.
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in Higher Education. 31(2): 199-218.
Sadler, D.R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18, 119-144.
TESTA (2009-16) Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment (www.testa.ac.uk)