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Squeezing assessment and stretching learning
1. The document discusses challenges related to assessment and feedback that are highlighted by TESTA (Thinking about Enhancing Student Testing and Assessment). It summarizes three main problems: things going awry without understanding why, curriculum design challenges, and challenges with academic reading and writing. 2. Evidence and strategies are presented for addressing issues like an over-reliance on summative assessment, disconnected feedback, and student confusion about goals and standards. Case studies of successful formative assessment practices are described. 3. Moving from a transmission model of education to a more social constructivist model is advocated, along with the idea of "learning-oriented summative" assessment. References are provided for further reading.
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Squeezing assessment and stretching learning
- 1. Squeezing assessment and stretchinglearning: the paradox of ‘less’ is ‘more’ @solentlearning @tansyjtweets Tansy Jessop Harper Adams University 20 September 2017
- 2. • Your thoughts •TESTA in a nutshell • Three problems TESTA highlights • Evidence and strategies about: – Summative: formative balance – Disconnected feedback – Internalising standards Today’s session
- 3. Your thoughts Go towww.menti.com and use the code 38 73 48 Type in three words or phrases to answer this question: What is the main assessment and feedback challenge you face?
- 4. Your views onthe challenges (n=54)
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- 8. TESTA…. “…is a wayof thinking about assessment and feedback” Graham Gibbs
- 9.
- 10. Three problems TESTAhighlights 1. Things going awry but not sure why 2. Curriculum design challenge 3. Academic reading and writing challenge
- 11. 1. Things goingawry
- 12. Problem 2: Curriculumdesign challenge
- 13. Does IKEA 101work for complex learning?
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- 15. The best approachfrom 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
- 16. Problem 3: Academicreading and writing
- 17. Is assessment environmentprompting it enough? Significant learning gains for students who 1) Read > 40 pages a week of academic writing 2) Write > 20 pages per semester for each unit
- 18.
- 19. Evidence and strategiesfor… 1. High summative and low formative diets 2. Disconnected feedback 3. Confusion about goals and standards
- 20. TESTA definitions Summative: graded assessmentwhich counts towards the degree Formative: Does not count: ungraded, required task with feedback
- 21. 1. High summative:low formative • High summative on UK, Irish, NZ and Indian degrees • ‘Pedagogy of control’ • Low formative: ratio of 1:8 formative to summative • Weakly practised and understood
- 22.
- 23. Your experience Which ofthese quotations resonates, and why? Any ideas to address the problem?
- 24. What students sayabout high summative • 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.
- 25. What students sayabout formative… • 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.
- 26. But… • If thereweren’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. • It’s good to know you’re being graded because you take it more seriously. • The lecturers do formative assessment but we don’t get any feedback on it.
- 27. So, how dowe do formative? Five case studies of successful formative What made them work?
- 28. Case Study 1:Business School • Reduction from average 2 x summative, zero formative per module • …to 1 x summative and 3 x formative • Required by students in entire business school • All working to similar script • Systematic shift, experimentation, less risky together
- 29. Case Study 2:Social Sciences • Problem: silent seminar, students not reading • Public platform blogging • Current academic texts • In-class • Threads and live discussion • Linked to summative
- 30. Case study 3:Film and TV • Seminar • Problem: lack of discrimination about sources • Students bring 1 x book, 1 x chapter, 1 x journal article, 2 x pop culture articles • Justify choices to group • Reach consensus about five best sources
- 31. • Predicting abstractfrom title and comparing Eg.“For whom the bell trolls: the impact of cyber-bullying on the self image of teenage girls in Liverpool”. • Blanking abstract – student read article, create own abstract and compare with original Case study 4: Generic journal activities
- 32. Case study 5:Construction Management • Problem: MCQs leaving little learning imprint • Staff time constructing MCQs • Lose-lose situation • Students complete one or two staff designed • Formative task: students construct MCQ items for peers in groups on clearly defined concepts within a topic area • Thinking work done by students
- 33. How to engagestudents in formative tasks Go to www.menti.com and use the code 61 98 59 Choose the three which you think work best
- 34. Your votes: engagingstudents in formative tasks n=58
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- 37. What students say It’sdifficult 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. 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.
- 38.
- 39. A two-way dialogue? Youressay lacked structure and your referencing is problematic Your classes are boring and I don’t really like you
- 40. We know that…. Feedbackis the single most important factor in learning (Hattie 2009). Formative feedback contributes to significant learning gains (Black and Wiliam 1998).
- 41. Ways to bedialogic • 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
- 42.
- 43. Students to lecturers: CriticalIncident Questionnaire Stephen Brookfield’s Critical Incident Questionnaire http://bit.ly/1loUzq0
- 44. 3. Confusion aboutstandards • 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
- 45. What students say… We’vegot two tutors- one marks completely differently to the other and it’s pot luck which one you get. They have different criteria, they build up their own criteria. It’s such a guessing game.... You don’t know what they expect from you. They read the essay and then they get a general impression, then they pluck a mark from the air.
- 46. Having ‘an eyefor a dog’
- 47. The Art andScience of Evaluation Judging is both an art and a science: It is an art because the decisions with which a judge is constantly faced are very often based on considerations of an intangible nature that cannot be recognized intuitively. It is also a science because without a sound knowledge of a dog’s points and anatomy, a judge cannot make a proper assessment of it whether it is standing or in motion. Take them round please: the art of judging dogs (Horner, 1975).
- 48. Taking action: internalisinggoals and standards • Regular calibration exercises • Discussion and dialogue • Discipline specific criteria (no cut and paste) Lecturers • Rewrite/co-create criteria • Marking exercises • Exemplars Lecturers and students • Enter secret garden - peer review • Engage in drafting processes • Self-reflection Students
- 49. The TESTA Effect •Rebalancing formative and summative • Better sequencing and progression • New approaches to formative, including more authentic assessment • Team approach to curriculum design • Improved student learning and engagement
- 50. From this educationalparadigm…
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- 54. References Arum R. andRoksa J. 2011. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press. Barlow, A. and Jessop, T. 2016. “You can’t write a load of rubbish”: Why blogging works as formative assessment. Educational Development. 17(3), 12-15. SEDA. Boud, D. and Molloy, E. (2013) ‘Rethinking models of feedback for learning: The challenge of design’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(6), pp. 698–712. Carr,. N. 2010. The Shallows. London. Atlantic Books Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004) Conditions under which assessment supports students' learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. 1(1): 3-31. Harland, T., McLean, A., Wass, R., Miller, E. and Sim, K. N. (2014) ‘An assessment arms race and its fallout: High-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. Jessop, T. and Tomas, C. 2016 The implications of programme assessment on student learning. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. Published online 2 August 2016. Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. (2014). The Influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student learning: a comparative study. Studies in Higher Education. Published Online 27 August 2014 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2014.943170 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. Nicol, D. (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35: 5, 501 – 517. O'Donovan, B , Price, M. and Rust, C. (2008) 'Developing student understanding of assessment standards: a nested hierarchy of approaches', Teaching in Higher Education, 13: 2, 205 -217. Sadler, D. R. (1989) ‘Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems’, Instructional Science, 18(2), pp. 119–144. doi: 10.1007/bf00117714.
Editor's Notes
- #2 Tansy
- #8 How do you measure soft stuff? 5 day cricket match versus 20/20
- #9 What started as a research methodology has become a way of thinking. David Nicol – changing the discourse, the way we think about assessment and feedback; not only technical, research, mapping, also shaping our thinking. Evidence, assessment principles. Habermas framework.
- #10 Academics operate in isolation from one another. Only see their part of the degree. Don’t see connections. Fragments into small tasks – hamster wheel. Curriculum design issue. The trouble is that students experience the whole elephant and it is often indigestible… Assessment is mainly sort of the topical knowledge and the topics never relate. We'll never do something again that we’ve already studied, like we learn something and then just move on (TESTA focus group data).
- #12 Data – persistent problem A&F scores. NSS not a good enough diagnostic tool. Green, amber, red - more luck than judgement. Traffic light systems – green for good. DVC find the people wo are doing well so we can share best practice. Three programmes. We don’t actually know why.
- #14 Hard to make connections, difficult to see the joins between assessments, much more assessment, much more assessment to accredit each little box. Multiplier effect. Less challenge, less integration. Lots of little neo-liberal tasks. The Assessment Arms Race.
- #15 Language of ‘covering material’ Should we be surprised?
- #17 Exeter economics/
- #23 Summative as a ‘pedagogy of control’ Teach Less, learn more. Assess less, learn more.
- #38 Impoverished dialogue
- #44 Is anyone listening?
- #49 Students can increase their understanding of the language of assessment through their active engagement in: ‘observation, imitation, dialogue and practice’ (Rust, Price, and O’Donovan 2003, 152), Dialogue, clever strategies, social practice, relationship building, relinquishing power.