How to fit an elephant into a cool box: Programme Assessment re-visited

Dr Tansy Jessop, TESTA Project LeaderSports Away Day

23 June 2014

IDEA 1: If you let modules determine your thinking about assessment, then student learning suffers.

TESTA’S three big ideas

Thinking about modules

modulus (Latin): small measure

“interchangeable units”

“standardised units”

“sections for easy constructions”

“a self-contained unit”

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

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

Moderation

Benchmarks

Criteria

Grades

There are two dominant paradigms…

Transmission Model

Social Constructivist model

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

Is learning about knowing content?

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

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

Cut to your views...

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

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

www.testa.ac.uk

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 – 517Sadler, D.R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems, Instructional Science, 18, 119-144.

References