Track A1 - Learning About Assessment Literacy: A Case Study from the Assessment Literacy Project

 Nicky Spawls and Clare O'Donoghue, Middlesex University, School of Health and Education

How do you go about reviewing assessment literary in programmes that have diverse cohorts, widely different prior experiences of assessment and diverging expectations? This was the opening of the presentation by Nicky Spawls and Clare O’Donoghue from the School of Health and Education.

Nicky and Clare decided to review their programmes’ assessment practice and use this as an opportunity, taking a broader programme level approach of assessment. Nicky and Clare discussed how they questioned consistency of practice across modules, or they identified the need to clarify standards with students and went on to look at ways to explain the purpose of formative assessment to students.

Their review went back to basics: reminding ourselves of how daunting assessment can be; asking ourselves why an essay is indeed the best way to assess certain modules; or how to personalise assessment in large cohorts of 150-200 students. But also interesting questions addressed the need to discuss assessment amongst staff, recognising that assessment is not only about students.

Report by Pascale Colonna, Senior Academic Developer, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)

Track A2 - Can Assessment Literacy be Enhanced and does it Lead to Improved Student Performance? A Case Study of Year One Business and Management Students at Middlesex University Business School

Simon Roberts, Middlesex University, Business School
Ana Marinica, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)
Karim Qizalbash, Learner Development Unit (LDU)

Simon Roberts started off the presentation by providing an overview of assessment literacy in the context of a project carried out in the Business School. The 12 week enhanced programme  and MBS0111 Preparing for Business have been evaluated through an assessment literacy lens and findings were discussed as part of the session. Students enrolled on the enhanced programme failed to meet their conditional offer with regard to required UCAS points and were offered a 12 week course that aimed at preparing them for University. The programme was designed in collaboration with the Learner Development Unit. Interestingly, it consisted of 12 hours of teaching in a week, 6 of which were delivered by the LDU in order to develop students’ academic writing skills.

Assessment literacy can be defined as students’ ability to translate and appreciate the relationship between students’ learning and assessment as well as assessment criteria, feedback practices and the level of assessment they are presented with. Ana also highlighted the importance of assessment in a student’s learning journey. Assessment has been looked at with regard to what students find to be important, how they spend their time and at the end how they see themselves as students and later on as graduates. The key issue identified in this project is the fact that students often don’t understand what a good piece of coursework is and what is expected from them, especially with regard to assessment criteria. 

Karim Qizalbash presented on how the team has employed a model by O’Donovan et al, (2008) - Approaches to Developing Student Understanding of Assessment Standards when evaluating the 12 week programme. The techniques Karim employed based on the feedback received from students at the beginning of the course were to make all the learning materials relevant to the assessment which included an essay and presentations. Formal 1-2-1 tutorials, general teacher lead instructions in seminars, individual/group tasks and peer review exercises were part of the 12 week programme.

The evaluation of the project consisted of both quantitative and qualitative data collection and two cohorts of students - enhanced and January start students were compared. The initial findings showed that the grades of the enhanced students were lower across all the assessments (with the exception of HRM1004), however the enhanced students had perceived higher clarity of the requirements of each assessment and were slightly more confident than their January start counterparts. 

Most of the discussions which took place during the workshop evolved around the implications and possible issues of managing the enhanced students and how the findings of this project can be disseminated and put into practice by the Programme Team. For further details, please have a look at the video and PowerPoint slides from this session.

Report by Natalia Czuba, Educational Technologist, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE)

Track C2: Developing quality feedback and assessment literacy in dance

 Julia K. Gleich
 Head of Choreography (London Studio Centre)

London Studio Centre’s shared their institution development of their Learning & Teaching Strategy 2013-18 focussing on assessment and feedback. The nature of practice at LSC makes use of intense continuous, day-to-day formative feedback by both tutors and peers, which ac
counts for unusual learning experience in HE. Addressing the high frequency of assessment and feedback is at centre of LSC’s culture of quality enhancement and review of assessment strategies that have led to significant successes in the National Student Survey.

The institution has reviewed strategies associated with developing effective feedback and assessment that include ways of creatively assessing creativity and identified points to consider in constructing effective feedback.

Identified Issues related to creative assessment:

·         How to “prepare for assessment” in a context of creativity

·         Prior learning

·         Tick-boxing / Goal-oriented-ness

·         Subjectivity

·         House styles

·         New ideas and risk-taking

                                                        

The staff at LSC also recognize that Assessment Literacy is a double-edged sword and if students are too focused on assessment, they will be unwilling to take risks and discover their own voices in a creative environment. In addition, Assessment tasks and criteria must be designed to reward even “inappropriate” choices as students re-invent themselves and develop new movement vocabularies, explore compositional strategies and form their artistic identities.

Constructing feedback

At LSC feedback is provided taking into consideration the points below:

·         Specificity

·         Constructive comments

·         Appropriate language

·         Transparency – see example below. If not clear from the starting point comments like “ student needs to be more analytical” – are not clear.

·         Enabling and encouraging/Positive but honest

·         Personal

The presentation also included seven principles of good feedback practice From Dr Nicol and Debra Macfarlane-Dick below:

“good feedback practice should facilitate the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning, encourage dialogue, clarify what is good performance, deliver quality information about the students learning, provide information to teachers to shape learning and should be motivational for the students and create positive self-esteem.”

Creatively Assessing Creativity from mdxaltc

Report by Betty Sinyinza, Educational Tehcnologist, Centre for Academic Practice Enhancement (CAPE) 

Workshop 1- Changing Perceptions of Ourselves: How Graduate Academic Assistants are Altering the Learning Experience of Education Studies Students Through Assessment Literacy

Dr. Carole L Davis, Sandip K Gill and Kristína Repová
Middlesex University, School of Health and Education

Carole, along with Sandip and Kristina, facilitated a lively interactive session, with activities around the clarity of guidance and assessment criteria, the importance of the quality of feedback and peer and self-assessment. Using specific examples from the GAA’s sessions with Education Studies students,  to prompt thinking and discussion, the 50 or so participants were tasked with discussing and feeding back suggestions for how they might tackle the specific issues raised by students. These issues included self-doubt by a high achieving student and another students consistent inability to understand and respond to assessment tasks. The session also outlined some of the interesting approaches the department and GAA’s have developed that students were appreciative of, such as a book club for students to discuss readings together.

The video clip provides a snapshot of the liveliness of the session and wealth of discussion that arose.

Changing Perceptions of ourselves from mdxaltc