After a inspiring Learning & Teaching Forum lead by Professor Chris Rust of Oxford Brookes, I pledged my post session action would be to capture my best bits from the day. So … Some  take away points from today’s session ….

  1. Authentic assessment is an excellent way to encourage engagement by students as it helps to personalise the student’s approach to the task and generates buy in. So rather than offering abstract tasks, like produce an essay on leadership styles, frame it to have a sense of audience and so that it emulates real world situations that the student may encounter. This could be as simple as changing an essay on business planning principles into a presentation of a business proposal to a prospective funder.
  2. Spot review class activities and feedback to the group – a major efficiency saver and a good way of making feedback a routine. So in a class of 40 students pick out five pieces of work to review and send group feedback based on those which have been seen.
  3. Getting back to first principles of constructive alignment guarantees some variety. If the learning outcomes are sufficiently varied and, if the assessment lines up to ensure that the actual outcomes are being assessed, this should in itself offer a degree of variety.
  4. Diversity is good, but care needs to be taken to ensure that the student journey does not become disjointed by variety. Having some repetition of assessment approaches at the programme level ensures that there is opportunity for students to make use of feedback. A balance is to be struck between variety and the opportunity to facilitate growth in students.
  5. Tutor time is disproportionately spent on housekeeping feedback – Are headings present? Are tables labelled? Is evidence offered when requested?  etc etc. A super simple tip might be to have a housekeeping checklist that students complete before submission to deal with all of these aspects, thus allowing time to be better spent on more substantial points of feedback. It works on the principle that answering ‘no’ to any of the housekeeping question prompts a response such that issues are dealt with before submission. Using such checklists, as a routine, ensures that the student takes greater responsibility for their own learning and tutor feedback can deal with more substantial issues. It must be an integral part of the assignment, i.e. will not mark without it, or else it will not be adopted.
  6. Less is more. With a greater number of summative assessments the opportunity to give feedback which can feed forward is limited by processes, effort spent on the justification of grades and administration. Instead, lose an assessment and gain the opportunity to utilise feed forward on a piece of work. One assignment, but constructed drawing upon feedback along the way. Simple, but brilliant (and a bit more like real life where review on a document would be an entirely sensible step).
  7. Reviewer is king! It is the act of reviewing more than the act of receiving feedback that can spur interest, new insights and leaps in understanding. Getting peer review embedded within courses is an excellent way of raising the presence and effectiveness of the feedback process. To buy into this we need to lay aside fears around peer feedback meaning a lack of parity in the quality and quantity of feedback received (which may be inevitable), and appreciate the value of the experience of reviewing as where the learning is really at. Liken this to being a journal reviewer – how much is learned by engaging with a review whether good or awful? (Analogy courtesy of Mark).
  8. Group vivas. Liking this lot and not something I had previously encountered. So simply a group project and attribution of marks depends in some part on a group viva where honesty is, in theory, self-regulating.
  9. 24 hours to act. In considering the value of formative quizzes, computer aided or class based as an opportunity to engage with knowledge received, we were reminded of the benefits of engaging sooner rather than later. Engagement with formative quizzes (or indeed reflective processes) within 24 hours of a class is much more effective that if left.
  10. Use audio feedback – it doubles feedback and makes production smoother.
  11. Future proof feedback plans. Formative in-class tests may be more efficient on paper for now, but ensure efforts by taking a dual pronged approach (online and paper).
  12. Pool efforts. Whether across course teams, departments or with colleagues nationally, look for efficiency gains in providing formative question banks. Open educational resource banks (e.g. Open jorum), subject centres and commercial textbooks with CDs of instructor question banks may all be sources to consider.
  13. The uber simple approach of asking students what the strengths and weaknesses of their assignment are can focus minds. Additionally asking them on which aspect they would like feedback creates a learning dialogue and ensures feedback is especially useful.

While all of these points matter it remains that it is most important to review the bigger picture. A major barrier to diversifying assessment and capitalising (in learning terms) of feedback opportunities can be modular structure to programmes. The TESTA Project revealed that  “the volume of feedback students receive does not predict even whether students think they receive enough feedback, without taking into account the way assessment across the programme operates”.  Volume of feedback or assessment will not improve student perceptions of feedback. Point 4. Above leads to the assumption also that timeliness alone is not enough either. While it is good for module level assessment and feedback to be considered in relation to the ideas above  a holistic look at the programme level helps us to understand the assessment journey of the student. How can feedback feed forward? Is their sufficient variety across a programme? Is their repetition? All questions worth asking beyond the module level.