testa seda keynote spring 2016
TRANSCRIPT
Changing the culture of assessment and feedback
through TESTA
Tansy Jessop@tansyjtweets @TESTAwin
13 May 2016
The TESTA Methodology
75 PROGRAMME AUDITS
Programme Team
Meeting
Sustained growth
TESTA….
“…is a way of thinking about assessment and feedback”
Graham Gibbs
TESTA shifts in perspective from…
• ‘my’ module to ‘our’ programme
• from teacher-focused on module delivery to student experience of whole programme
• from individualistic modular design to coherent team design
• from the NSS to enhancement strategies
TESTA addresses three problems
Problem 1: Knee-jerk problem
Problem 2: Curriculum design problem Problem 3: Evidence to action problem
Problem 1: The knee-jerk
Wow! Our students love History! Fantastic!
Whoops there’s a little problem here
Fix it!
Ok, we’ll look especially at polishing up our feedback. Students seems to
find that the least best thing.
Apply spit and polish
Anyone for the feedback sandwich?
I cushion the blow!
The hard truths are nicely disguised!
Me too - nice and soft!
Problem 2: Curriculum design problem
Does IKEA 101 work for complex learning?
Curriculum privileges ‘knowing’ stuff
“Content is often the most visible aspect for students, the control of which is frequently devolved to individual academics, who receive little or no training in curriculum design and planning”
(Blackmore and Kandiko 2014, 7).
Blunt instrument curriculum
Problem 3: Evidence to action gap
Problem 3: Evidence to action gap
Three misguided assumptions:1. Problem is a lack of high
quality data.
2. Analysis and findings a key mechanism for change.
3. Academics’ intellectual approach will facilitate change.
http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/study-overview/
Proving is different from improving
“It is incredibly difficult to translate assessment evidence into improvements in student learning”
“It’s far less risky and complicated to analyze data than it is to act”
(Blaich & Wise, 2011)
Paradigm What it looks like
Technical rational Focus on data and tools
Relational Focus on people
Emancipatory Focus on systems and structures
TESTA themes and impacts
1. Variations in assessment patterns2. High summative: low formative3. Disconnected feedback4. Lack of clarity about goals and standards
1. Huge variations
• What is striking for you about this data?
• How does it compare with your context?
• Does variation matter?
Characteristic Range
Summative 12 -227
Formative 0 - 116
Varieties of assessment 5 - 21
Proportion of examinations 0% - 87%
Time to return marks & feedback 10 - 42 days
Volume of oral feedback 37 -1800 minutes
Volume of written feedback 936 - 22,000 words
And some patterns…Characteristic Low Medium High
Volume of summative assessment
Below 33 40-48 More than 48
Volume of formative only Below 1 5-19 More than 19
% of tasks by examinations Below 11% 22-31% More than 31%
Variety of assessment methods
Below 8 11-15 More than 15
Written feedback in words Less than 3,800 6,000-7,600 More than 7,600
Actions based on evidence
a) Reduction in summative b) Increase in formative c) Streamlined varieties d) More or less feedback depending…e) Quantifiable f) Every time a coconut with each feature
Theme 2: High summative: low formative
• Summative ‘pedagogies of control’
• Circa 2 per module in UK
• Ratio of 1:8 of formative to summative
• Formative weakly understood and practised
What students say…
• 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.
What students say: the barriers
• 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.
• 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.
Assessment Arms Race
Actions based on evidence
1. Rebalance summative and formative2. Shared language: programme approach3. Formative in the public domain4. Linking formative and summative5. Risky, creative, challenging tasks6. Students reading and producing more7. Deeper understanding of value of formative
Theme 3: Disconnected feedback
Take five
• Choose a quote that strikes you.
• What is the key issue?
• What strategies might address this issue?
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”.
Students say the feedback relationship is broken…
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’.
Actions based on evidence
• Conversation: who starts the dialogue?• Iterative cycles of reflection across modules• Quick generic feedback: the ‘Sherlock’ factor• Feedback synthesis tasks• Technology: audio, screencast and blogging• From feedback as ‘telling’…• … to feedback as asking questions
Theme 4: Confusion about goals and standards
• 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
What students say…
We’ve got 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.
What students say…
There are criteria, but I find them really strange. There’s “writing coherently, making sure the argument that you present is backed up with evidence”.
I get the impression that they don't even look at the marking criteria. They read the essay and then they get a general impression, then they pluck a mark from the air. I don’t have any idea of why it got that mark
Caught in a paradigm war…
Scientific Paradigm Naturalistic paradigmNeutrality Interpretation
Written and traceable Free, ephemeral, incidental, gaps
Convergent Divergent
Standardised Varied
Final word Dialogic, provisional
Accountability and evidence Social practice
Taking action: internalising goals and standards• Regular calibration exercises• Discussion and dialogue• Discipline specific criteria (no cut and paste)
Staff Team
• Rewrite/co-create criteria• Marking exercises (ASKE CETL)• Design and value formative
Staff and students
• Enter secret garden - peer review• Engage in drafting processes• Self-reflection
Students
It’s about educational paradigms…
Transmission Model
Social Constructivist Model
Impacts at Winchester
• Upwards trajectory on A&F scores on NSS on TESTA programmes – ‘Top 4’ University
• TESTA ‘effect’ - people talk about formative• Experimentation in co-creation• Team approach to designing curricula• Design cycle for periodic review includes TESTA
ReferencesBlaich, C., & Wise, K. (2011). From Gathering to Using Assessment Results: Lessons from the Wabash National Study. Occasional Paper #8. University of Illinois: National Institution for Learning Outcomes Assessment.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. doi: 10.1080/02602938.2012.691462.Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004) Conditions r 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, 40(4), pp. 528–541. doi: 10.1080/02602938.2014.931927.Hughes, G. (2014) Ipsative Assessment. Basingstoke. Palgrave MacMillan.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/10.1080/03075079.2014.943170Jessop, 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 — 217Sadler, D. R. (1989) ‘Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems’, Instructional Science, 18(2), pp. 119–144. doi: 10.1007/bf00117714.