What is the purpose of assessment?

I had not thought of it this way, but there are two different purposes to academic assesment:

1. Organisational Assurance: do the students know what we think they should know, and do they know it at a ‘masterful’ level?
2. Student-Centred Assessment: do the students themselves know what they do and don’t know?

These two aims may sometimes conflict and need to be balanced. An over-emphasis on organisational assurance could negatively impact on transactional distance, while an over-emphasis on the student-centred learning, might detract from engaged learning communities and engaged online teaching.

On the other hand, good digital assessments can have a positive effect on student motivation, achievement, and engagement, by encouraging the students to develop more robust self-regulatory approaches to learning.

We are reminded that The Manifesto for Teaching Online tells us,

“A digital assignment can live on. It can be iterative, public, risky, and multi-voiced,”

and so we are encouraged to create assessment practices that bring to life the regulations of the university (2019) in innovative ways (what?).

In practice, that means we should be creating assessments that:

• are beneficial to both the student and the programme
• actively foster learning
• are fair, reliable and valid
• are secure and transparent
• are linked to an authentic context

Authenticity in Assessment

Authentic assessments would be task-based, requiring students to demonstrate practices, behaviours, and skills that are relevant to professional practitioners in their intended fields.

For example, authentic assessments could include practice-based projects to apply domain specific concepts, organisational scenarios, and even mock consultancies for organisations.

References and Links

• Bettley, A., & Horrocks, I. (2018). Emergent Versus Planned Assessment and Tuition Strategies for Online Postgraduate Teaching of Technology and Innovation Management at the Open University, UK. In On the Line (pp. 55-73). Springer, Cham.
• Hatziapostoulou T. & Paraskakis I. (2010). Enhancing the impact of formative feedback on student learning through an online feedback system. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 8, 11–122.
• Ibabe I., & Jauregizar J. (2010). Online self-assessment with feedback and metacognitive knowledge. Higher Education, 59, 243–258. doi:10.1007/s10734-009-9245-6.
• Moore, M. G. (2013). The Theory of Transactional Distance. In Handbook of distance education (84-103). London: Routledge.
• University of Edinburgh (2019). Taught Assessment Regulations Academic Year 2018/19. Available: https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/taughtassessmentregulations.pdf
• The Manifesto for Teaching Online

Researchers from the Near Future Teaching Project interviewed students to get their thoughts on automation in teaching, and they had some interesting thoughts:

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Is it good when times keep changing?

Would automation of teaching bring us enhanced efficiency with ‘teacher-light’ tuition, or should it be resisted as damaging to teacher professionalism and the humanistic values of education?

With Teacherbot, an experiment in automated teaching, Professor of Digital Education, Sian Bayne (2015) asked,

What about the spaces in between teaching? What if “the ‘teacher function’ might become less a question of living teacher presence and more a posthuman mash-up of video, algorithm and automated process?” Could that both broaden and improve the student and teaching experience of what it means to be at university online?

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1. What concerns would you imagine people having with feedback and assessment online who were new to this form of teaching? (for example, uncertainty about how much time to spend giving feedback).
2. Imagine you are an online student. How much feedback would you want? How many times per course would you want to be assessed?

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Different types of feedback

Feedforward

The reason for feedforward is that feedback received on a final assignment isn’t actionable within the course itself. Instead, we can provide feedforward from an earlier activity that is directly related to the final assignment, so that this demonstrates to the students what they need to do.

Peer-based feedback

Although feedback from a tutor results in greater learning gains, both giving and receiving constructive feedback between peers are critical skills that can be incorporated into a course design to help encourage an engaged learning community.

I found this useful list of types of questions on Wikimedia Commons:

Types of Questions and Activities: Public domain image by M chap, via Wikimedia Commons

Links

• Evans, C. (2013). Making Sense of Assessment Feedback in Higher Education, Review of Educational Research, 83(1): 70-120.
• Kauffman J., Schunn C. (2011). Students’ perceptions about peer assessment for writing: Their origin and impact on revision work. Instructional Science, 39, 387–406.
• O’Shea, C. (2018). Collaborative writing, feedforward and connoisseurship: the Assessment, Learning and Digital Education group assignment. Available: http://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/collaborative-writing-feedforward-and-connoisseurship-the-assessment-learning-and-digital-education-group-assignment/.
   
• Principles of good formative assessment

“When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment; when the customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment.” ~ Paul Black, frequently cited as a forefather of formative assessment research

(Header image: Feedback Sketchnote, by Luigi Mengato, via Flickr. Licence: CC-BY-20. These sketchnotes are a very interesting find that I definitely want to check out later!)

What makes for effective feedback?

Feedback should be actionable, timely and relevant

Actionable

Actionable means that the feedback gives the student some practical advice they can act on to improve their future work.

Timely

Timely means that the feedback is provided as soon as possible after the activity. In some cases, this could be synchronous, for example when a teacher takes and observer role and provides feedback during the course of an activity. Automated marking processes can also provide instant feedback. In other cases, assignments should be marked and feedback provided as soon as possible after they are submitted.

Relevant

Feedback should be relevant to the particular learning activity, the academic discipline being studied, and the professional practice that the students are preparing for.

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Here are some thoughts on feedback and assessment from around the University:

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Feedback and Assessment is a very relevant module for me now, as we are currently working on preparing for the remote exams that are now required because of the coronavirus pandemic. I am very thankful to have this module available!

These are the learning objectives:

Module 4 Learning Outcomes

At the completion of this module, I will:

• Understand the key concepts of online feedback and assessment.
• Evaluate and redefine our own feedback and assessment practices for application online.
• Reflect on the impact of feedback and feedback on subsequent assessment design and student performance.

Feedback and assessment are key to the development of engaged learning communities and engaged online teaching practices. We need to learn how best to construct them.

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