Welcome to Mar-May Learning & Teaching Enhancement theme: Assessment and feedback revisited↗️
Assessment and feedback continue to be an ongoing concern and priority for the University. The recent Quality Enhancement and Standards Review (QESR) conducted by QAA Scotland re-affirms assessment and feedback as a priority issue for us. The QESR report, published in January 2024, calls for urgent action:
“The University should take immediate action, within the current academic year, to ensure that the new Assessment and Feedback Principles and Priorities (developed in response to ELIR 4) are fully implemented in all Schools, that feedback turn-round times and quality are monitored effectively, and that prompt action is taken to address any shortcomings”
This Teaching Matters series on assessment and feedback provides a timely opportunity to revisit the Assessment and Feedback Principles and Priorities first introduced in a previous series↗️ published in July 2022. It also provides an opportunity to share examples of assessment and feedback practice that are supporting the implementation of the Principles and Priorities.
The Assessment and Feedback Principles and Priorities↗️ were rolled out from the start of academic year 2022/23. We’re now in the second year of implementation. In the first year of implementation, the initial focus was on addressing the ‘Principles’. These set the baseline expectations for assessment and feedback and include expectations for:
- Assessment design (such as assessment being fit for purpose, assessment tasks being inclusive, equitable and fair, making appropriate use of technology);
- Assessment processes (being reliable, robust and transparent);
- Feedback (being timely, constructive and developmental);
- Student involvement (the importance of involving students in discussions about assessment and feedback, to ensure they understand the expectations and have an opportunity to provide feedback on their assessment experience);
- Programmatic coherence and oversight (ensuring that volumes of assessment are proportionate to credit amounts and levels and that assessment is designed and mapped at programme level).
Getting the basics right is key.
The NSS tells us that we still have some way to go in terms of meeting some of these baseline expectations, in particular feedback turnaround times and the helpfulness of feedback. These are not unrelated, since late feedback is not helpful; but there are also concerns from students that feedback does not sufficiently help them understand where they went wrong and how they can improve their performance going forward.
In a recent sector-wide analysis of the NSS open comments of institutions scoring below and above the national average for assessment and feedback, Harkin et al (2022)↗️ identified four key themes explaining the difference between low and high performing institutions. Two of the themes – timing, and assessment clarity and fairness – align with the areas that our students express most dissatisfaction with. The study highlights low-performing institutions consistently perform poorly on these aspects, receiving high volumes of negative comments, whereas high-performing institutions tended to experience a much lower volume or an absence of negative comments.
The authors noted good pedagogical practice identifies distinct temporal phases for assessment, feedback and marking and the need to make each of these phases explicit within and between taught units:
- before assessment submission – students need to have clear assessment expectations, criteria and guidance, and opportunity to discuss these;
- after receiving feedback – feedback must be clear, linked to the criteria and must help students understand the strengths of their work and areas for development;
- between assessments – feedback should help students move from one assessment to the next and understand how they improve in their next assessment.
These are basic expectations that align with our Assessment and Feedback Principles and are necessary to enable students to succeed in their assessments. Beyond the basic expectations, we have also established a set of key Priorities for ourselves. These encourage greater emphasis on authentic assessments, assessment for learning, assessment inclusive by design and student partnership in assessment.
Harkin et al (2022)↗️ identified that (apart from meeting the basics of feedback timeliness and clarity) a key distinguishing feature of institutions that performed high on the NSS for assessment and feedback was that their assessments provided inspiration for the present and the future. Assessments were authentically aligned with or applicable to future employment, they helped to build future skills, essentially enabling students to become practitioners of their discipline.
So, in summary, if we want to improve our students’ experience with assessment and feedback, not only do we need to ensure we are consistently getting the basics right, but we also need to consider how we utilise assessment for learning, to prepare and equip our students to build the skills and capabilities they need both now and into the future. The contributors to this series provide a wonderful array of examples of practice that address the Assessment and Feedback Principles and Priorities. I’m sure you will find something in this series to inspire you and enhance your assessment and feedback practice to the benefit of students!
Reference:
Ben Harkin, Aspasia Eleni Paltoglou, Khizra Tariq, Maggie Watkin, Shokaib Ashfaq, Alan Yates, and Carly Jacobs (2022). Student Experiences of Assessment and Feedback in the National Student Survey: An Analysis of Student Written Responses with Pedagogical Implications. International Journal of Management and Applied Research, Vol. 9, No. 2. pp. 115-139. https://ijmar.org/v9n2/22-006.pdf↗️
Tina Harrison
Professor Tina Harrison is the Deputy Vice-Principal Students (Enhancement), Joint Head of Marketing Group, and Professor of Financial Services Marketing and Consumption at the University of Edinburgh. Tina joined the University in 1993 and continues to maintain an active academic role in the Business School. She has had overall responsibility for the University’s quality assurance framework as Assistant Principal since 2009. She plays a key role in the Scottish HE quality landscape as a member of QAA Scotland’s Advisory Board, chair of the sparqs University Advisory Group, and member of the Quality Arrangements for Scottish Higher Education (QASHE) group.
