Assessment

Proposals for feedback on assessments

Background

In addition to delivering high quality information to students about their learning, the HEA, drawing on a range of educational research, outlines in detail how good feedback practice:

• Facilitates the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning.
• Encourages teacher and peer dialogue around learning.
• Helps clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, and expected standards).
• Provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance.
• Encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem.
• Provides information to teachers that can be used to help shape the teaching.

At the centre of these discussions has been the development of conceptual models of the feedback cycle that describes how it can benefit a wide diversity of learning practices and ensure the maximum pedagogic value is obtained from every student submission. Given this wide ranging scope for benefit to both students and academic teachers there is a clear imperative for College to adopt a minimum set of guidelines that can be specifically built upon by each department.

Recommendations

We recommend that departments consider the following issues and positively determine action in relation to each of them (guidance on the scope for interpretation of the recommendations follows in the subsequent section):

• The provision of a mark and written comments on all student submissions in all their forms in a reasonable time;

• That feedback for each assessment task is provided in a common manner;

• That the issue of providing feedback encompasses both formative and summative methods of assessment. Decisions regarding what is both practical and appropriate should be based on specific issues relating to each course and type of submission, rather than solely categorical decisions concerning whether an assessment is formative or summative;

• That a record be kept by the staff member of this feedback, together with the mark, so that a more detailed archive of student performance can be maintained and the relationship between course/coursework and any final formal assessment for individual cases and entire cohort can be reviewed if desired;

• That the assessment feedback not only evaluates the submission according to specified criteria and outcomes, but that some explicit guidance is also provided concerning how a student might actually have improved the submission for future consideration;

• That the method of feedback is integrated into the course guidelines available to students and staff so that it can duly be considered a central rather than peripheral activity;

• That College establish a central resource to share good practice for feedback methods.

Specific Guidelines and Rationales

Following the recommendations above, we wish to advocate that they are adopted through the following guidelines in order that each department (for example through their LTCs) can reflect upon and implement differently according to their own circumstances and local culture of teaching and learning:

(Rec1) That feedback is provided for all forms of assessment within three normal term-time weeks (excluding vacation time or during the Examination Term)
There is consensus amongst educationalists that rapid feedback is more valuable for students learning than extensive feedback; in other words shorter, more limited feedback provided rapidly is of more benefit than lengthy feedback that is given after delay and once the student has potentially lost focus on the work they submitted. Related literature on timely feedback also emphasises how it benefits student self-esteem and work motivation. Of course tutors will need to be mindful about the way feedback is formulated as overly critical feedback can have an adverse effect on self-esteem and motivation.

(Rec2 & Rec3) That feedback be provided in a common manner for all students taking a course, but that what constitutes appropriate feedback should be determined by the Department
Feedback can consist of a wide variety of methods and does not necessarily have to be tutor generated; for example, it can consist of the routine incorporation of peer-to-peer reviews, directed self-critiques and structured reflections, and other personal response systems. It can also be directed to a cohort as well as individual students: Providing feedback on general issues arising from student submissions - for example common mistakes, weaknesses or misunderstandings - can be an efficient and valuable technique that explicitly links student work with issues relating to course aims and outcomes. Consequently, the College will always welcome innovative techniques.

However, whatever methods are adopted, it is important that they are viewed as an integral aspect of teaching a course as they serve not only to confirm to students the pedagogic value the tutor sees in providing feedback, but can also assist the tutor in surveying student work and recognise generic issues arising. Ensuring feedback is provided in a common manner for an entire cohort is particularly crucial in instances where there is use of more than one tutor for a course.

A single mark or limited comment rarely constitutes adequate feedbackIn order for the range of benefits and roles that feedback can provide as listed above, a single mark or its corresponding single descriptor can rarely be considered adequate individualised feedback. Whilst many might assume a discursive set of paragraphs is the only method for providing feedback, a range of different forms exist – for example, a set of marks and short comments relating to specific criteria, oral feedback, peer to peer feedback, and so forth. We wish all departments to embrace this, and find creative and novel ways to provide feedback based on recognition of its central pedagogic value. Once feedback is recognised as a valuable and useful aspect of the learning process and thereby the effectiveness of assessment maximised, there is a possibility that overall assessment requirements could be reduced.

(Rec 4) A record of the feedback be kept by each tutor
Feedback provision has a range of external values as well as internal ones within the course and its cohort. A record of the feedback is likely to have a range of uses for tutors and other staff: it will provide ongoing evidence of whether students are making the changes in understanding which teaching inputs are designed to promote; it may be drawn upon during Exam Boards; it might be used as a resource when reviewing a course or programme, and it is likely to provide an important basis for comparing different forms of assessment and their outcomes (for example, when looking at the relationship between formative and summative assessment). This resource will consequently serve to inform reviews within each department, and aid the design and possible amendments of courses and programmes. Thus, feedback also serves to provide a very valuable indication of the value and role of a course within a programme of study, and the extent to which is meets its stipulated aims and objectives.

Records of individual feedback will also be useful to assist individual student issues (such as reference writing, the nomination for student awards, etc)

(Rec 5)Feedback should include some guidance on how the work could be improved, as well as addressing its faults
Clearly providing some positive encouragement is good teaching practice, but more specifically than this, feedback that suggests how work might be improved encourages students to actively reflect on their work, and consider how they could improve their submission. This ensures that the assessment gains an explicit formative value directed to how they might ‘close the gap’ between their submission and the specified criteria and outcomes provided. It is worth emphasising that even if submissions are for summative evaluations of student work, this aspect of feedback helps students see how any course recently completed nevertheless has formative value for their future studies.

(Rec 6) Feedback must relate to specified criteria and outcomes and that these are published in course guidelines and student handbooks
Whilst it is always the case that a tutor assesses work according to a range of criteria, frequently these are implicit or tacit and not made clear to students. There is much evidence to suggest that students respond best when they are confident they know what is expected of them; equally, providing feedback, particularly relating to specified aims and objectives, allows them to clearly understand the limitations of their submission. Research suggests that where students have actually been involved in the formulation of assessment criteria, not only do they clearly understand what is required of them, but the process also promotes a deep sense of engagement and they begin to acquire the critical skill of ‘self assessment’. Determining what good performance should be is also highly valuable for tutors to reflect upon and make explicit to themselves. Although some literature describes this as the provision of a goal or standard, what is crucial is simply that each work task is not entirely open-ended such that a student explicitly knows what they should be aiming for. Overall, this recommendation is to ensure that feedback is presented as a central part of the learning activity, rather than merely a procedure that happens after learning.

(Rec 7) Establishing a College Resource to share good practice
The above general recommendations and guidelines have been written specifically to enable individual departments to think about their own Assessment and Feedback strategies, and determine the best method and most appropriate form for its students in relation to disciplinary and programme issues. Because of this, we expect a range of different practices to be developed. In order that work can be shared across departments, our final recommendation is that a central bank is gradually built up that contains not only individual case accounts, but possibly comments and advice obtained from staff member’s first hand experience that can be used across disciplines. We expect this resource to eventually provide an important contribution to individual department and College’s own Teach, Learning and Assessment strategies in the future.

Dr Simon Cohn
Mr Andrew Brett Revised: 14 May 2007