How to fit an elephant into a cool box: programme assessment re-visited.

1. How to fit an elephant into a cool box:
Programme Assessment re-visited
Dr Tansy Jessop, TESTA Project Leader
Sports Away Day
23 June 2014

2. IDEA 1: If you let modules determine your thinking
about assessment, then student learning suffers.
TESTA’S three big ideas

3. Thinking about modules
modulus (Latin): small measure
“interchangeable units”
“standardised units”
“sections for easy constructions”
“a self-contained unit”

4. How well does IKEA 101 packaging
work for Sports Studies 101?
Furniture
 Bite-sized
 Self-contained
 Interchangeable
 Quick and instantaneous
 Standardised
 Comes with written
instructions
 Consumption
Student Learning
 Long and complicated
 Interconnected
 Distinctive
 Slow, needs deliberation
 Varied, differentiated
 Tacit, unfathomable,
abstract
 Production

5. IDEA 2: If you treat assessment and feedback only as a big
industrial processing machine, than you are likely to get stuck
in the wrong paradigm.
TESTA’s big idea No 2
Credits Word counts

6. There are two dominant
paradigms…

7. Transmission Model

8. Social Constructivist model

9. IDEA 3: It’s not all about the content. It’s not all
about information. It’s not all about stuff
students need to cover.
TESTA’s big idea No 3

10. Is learning about knowing content?

11. Curriculum is about....
 Knowing is about content
 Acting is about becoming a
historian or soldier or a
sports psychologist
 Being is about
understanding yourself,
orienting yourself and
relating your knowledge
and action to the world
See Barnett and Coate (2005)
Knowing
Being
Acting

12. 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
A Student’s lecture to professors

13. Cut to your views...

14. Team A: The one assessment idea I’d
like to see working across our whole
department is….
Team B: The one feedback idea I’d
like to see working across our whole
department is….
Five minute ‘espresso’ time

15. In groups, spend 5 minutes placing your post-it ideas
on flipcharts in clusters or themes:
 TEAM A - Assessment
 TEAM B - Feedback.
Go dotty: Go round the room for 10 minutes placing
green dots on the ideas you most like, yellow on
ambivalent, and red that you hate.
Espresso ideas on flipcharts

16. What course leaders said…

17. Students are very demanding. There is an “I’m paying for my
degree” attitude. “ I deserve rather than have to earn it”.
Theory is not high up their list. The theoretical is a bit alien.
It is very difficult to get students to do readings. We need ways
out of the silent seminar.
Attendance is an issue.
about students….

18. Students don’t know how to use feedback.
Students like annotations and personal comments.
They really like practical assessments.
Students perceive a lack of marking consistency.
Some international students have never written more than 500
words.
about students (2)

19. Peer-review leads to grade inflation. It is high stakes
at L6.
I have an anxiety about peer review that they may
land up copying each other or go down cul de sacs.
I tried a peer marking exercise and it really worked.
Students found it valuable and said so.
about peer review

20. Marking grids validate comments and make it
easier to justify grades to students
The use of grids cuts down words and is not as
personalised.
There is inconsistency in the type of grids used.
about marking grids

21. Getting marking consistency is a huge thing.
Consistency of marking is an issue.
There is inconsistency in modes of feedback – electronic
and paper-based systems and types of grids used.
about consistency

22. There is a trade-off between promptness and
quality of feedback.
We have never audited the quality of feedback.
There is very little feed-forward with 19 different
assessment types.
about feedback

23. The three week turnaround for a large cohort with three
main lecturers is really stressful.
It is difficult trying to make a positive experience for a large
number of students with the resources allocated.
The main barrier is staff’s perception that more effective
A&F is time-consuming.
About workload and class-size

24. The ever shortening academic year places pressure on staff
and students, bunches deadlines, and works against
development and ‘slow leaning’.
About semesters and the academic
year

25. The need to have more challenging expectations has been
interpreted as meaning “add more content”. We need to
explore what intellectually challenging means.
About setting challenging goals

26. Formative is not used in an appropriate manner
We need a culture shift around formative which
requires setting student expectations.
Students are very (summative) assessment focused.
About formative

27. There is a lack of robust staff induction and training for new staff.
Every three years we mix it up and change what teachers teach.
Online submission tools are clunky and not great.
I see pockets of good practice.
My worries are patchy good practice.
About systems

28. Cut to students

29. Lack of clear goals and standards
Quantity and quality of feedback
Low effort, coverage of syllabus
and learning from exams
Three main areas

30. www.testa.ac.uk

31. Barnett, R. and Coate, K (2005) Engaging the Curriculum in Higher Education. Maidenhead. SRHE.
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. (2009). Characterising programme-level assessment environments
that support learning. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 34,4: 481-489.
Hattie, J. (2007) The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research. 77(1) 81-112.
Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. (in press). The Influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student
learning: a comparative study. Studies in Higher Education.
Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. (2014) 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. 39(1) 73-88.
Jessop, T, McNab, N & 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.
Nicol, D. (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher
education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35: 5, 501 – 517
Sadler, D.R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems, Instructional
Science, 18, 119-144.
References