Large Classes & Assessment Professor Margaret Price Director ASKe Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange)

Large Classes & Assessment

Professor Margaret Price

DirectorASKe Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning(Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange)Oxford Brookes University

[email protected],

mailto:[email protected]

Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange

Outline

• Context of assessment with large classes

• Assessment standards and ‘the assessment literate student’

• The assessment cycle and interventions

• Community and density of interactions


The Large Class Context - 2009

Massification Resource reduction Broadening of learning outcomes Fragmentation Diversification Research agendas Regulation Quest for reliability


Assessment: a key driver of student learning

“Assessment is at the heart of the student experience”

(Brown, S & Knight, P., 1994)

“From our students’ point of view, assessment always defines the actual curriculum”

(Ramsden, P.,1992)

“Assessment defines what students regard as important, how they spend their time and how they come to see themselves as students and then as graduates.........If you want to change student learning then change the methods of assessment”

(Brown, G et al, 1997)


But there are problems…

• Quality reviews• National Student Satisfaction Survey (UK)• “the Achilles’ heel of quality” (Knight 2002a, p. 107)

• Summative assessment practices “in disarray” (Knight 2002b, p. 275

• “Broken” (Race 2003, p. 5)

• “There is considerable scope for professional development in the area of assessment” (Yorke et al, 2000, p7)

• Rising concern about cheating and plagiarism


Problems contd.

“The types of assessment we currently use do not promote conceptual understanding and do not encourage a deep approach to learning………Our means of assessing them seems to do little to encourage them to adopt anything other than a strategic or mechanical approach to their studies.” (Newstead 2002, p3)

“…students become more interested in the mark and less interested in the subject over the course of their studies.” (Ibid, p2)


Working towards assessment literacy

Communicating and engaging students with assessment requirements: standards, criteria and feedback

A key issue in assessment is that students often do not understand what is a better piece of work and do not understand what is being asked of them particularly in terms of standards and criteria (O’Donovan et al., 2001).

Understanding assessment criteria and standards is an ‘indispensable condition’ for improved academic performance (Sadler, 1989) and enables assessment for the long term (Boud, 2009) – making informed judgements about one’s own work and that of others which is fundamental to independent learning.


Active student engagement

Passive student engagement

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1. The Traditional Model – 2. The ‘Dominant Logic’ Explicit Model

3. The Social Constructivist Model

4. The ‘Cultivated’ Community of Practice Model

The Past

The Future

O’Donovan, Price & Rust 2008




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1. The Traditional Model –Standards absorbed over relatively longer times informally and serendipitously

2. The ‘Dominant Logic’ Explicit Model



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The Past

The Future

O’Donovan, Price and Rust. 2008




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1. The Traditional Model –Standards absorbed over relatively longer times informally and serendipitously

2. The ‘Dominant Logic’ Explicit Model Standards explicitly articulated (with limitations) and passively presented to students



The Past

The Future



Active engagement with feedback

Explicit Criteria

Completion and submission of work

Students Active engagement with criteria

Rust C.,O’Donovan B. & Price, M. (2005)


Meaningful understanding of standards requires both tacit and explicit knowledge (O’Donovan, B., Price, M., & Rust, C., 2004)

“we can know more than we can tell” (Polanyi, reprinted 1998, p.136).

Verbal level descriptors are inevitably ‘fuzzy’ (Sadler 1987)

There is a cost (in terms of time and resources) to codifying knowledge which increases the more diverse an audience’s experience and language (Snowdon, 2002).

Tacit knowledge is experience-based and can only be revealed through the sharing of experience – socialisation processes involving observation, imitation and practice (Nonaka, 1991)

‘making sense of the world’ is seen as a social and collaborative activity (Vygotsky, 1978).

Making meaning requires explicit and tacit knowledge




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1. The Traditional Model

Standards absorbed over relatively longer times informally and serendipitously

2. The ‘Dominant Logic’ Explicit Model

Standards explicitly articulated (with limitations) and passively presented to students


Actively engaging students in formal processes to communicate tacit knowledge of standards


The Past

The Future




Explicit Criteria



Rust C.,O’Donovan B. & Price M. (2005)


Active engagement with criteria

Students need to understand the assessment standards and criteria to be able to self-evaluate their work in the act of production itself

Actively engaging students with exemplars (ASKe 123 leaflet)

Peer review and peer assessment Self-evaluation forms



Explicit Criteria



Rust C.,O’Donovan B. & Price M. (2005)


Enhancing student learning

Feedback is the most powerful single pedagogic influence that makes a difference to student achievement

Hattie (1987) - in a comprehensive review of 87 meta-analyses of studies

Feedback has extraordinarily high and consistently positive effects on learning compared with other aspects of teaching or other interventions designed to improve learning

Black and Wiliam (1998) - in a comprehensive review of formative assessment

Students are hungry for feedback to develop their learning(Higgins et al, 2002; O’Donovan et al 2001; Hyland 2000)


Active Engagement with Feedback

There is confusion over purpose of feedback Engagement is strongly influenced by opportunity to

apply feedback to future performance This relies on • ability to understand feedback • expectations of the utility of feedback• perception of self efficacy

Feedback is a process not a product. The relational dimension within the process is key to student engagement

Dialogue supports understanding and engagement (Price, Handley,& O’Donovan 2008)


Enhancing student learning through engagement with feedback

Preparation and setting expectations early in the programme

Identifying ‘feedback moments’ and application opportunities within the programme

Emphasize the relational dimension of feedback

Building in space for dialogue

All quite difficult to do in a resource-constrained environment!




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1. The Traditional Model – Tacit standards absorbed over relatively longer times informally and serendipitously

2. The ‘Dominant Logic’ Explicit Model Standards explicitly articulated (with limitations) and passively presented to students

3. The Social Constructivist Model Actively engaging students in formal processes to communicate tacit knowledge of standards


Tacit standards communicated through participation in informal knowledge exchange networks ‘seeded’ by specific activities.

The Past

The Future




Explicit Criteria



Assessment design & development of explicit criteria

Tutor discussion of criteria

Marking and moderation

Staff Assessment guidance to staff



Explicit Criteria



Assessment design & development of explicit criteria

Tutor discussion of criteria

Marking and moderation

Staff Assessment guidance to staff

Rust C.,O’Donovan B & Price., M (2005)


Cultivating community

Student involvement as measured by student/staff and student/student interaction is the most significant predictor of students’ academic success (Astin, 1997)

Cultivating community and increasing density of interactions

‘affinity space’, collaborative activity – e.g.group work



Explicit Criteria



In addition, for group work to be effective, you need to consider…

Product or process?

Group selection, group sizes

Programme policy

Students



Explicit Criteria



In addition, for group work to be effective, you need to consider… Groupwork and

learning outcomes

Groupwork training and practice

Groupwork task - integrated or legoised?

Students



Explicit Criteria




Early warning systems

Heterogeneous vs. homogeneous groups

Students



Explicit Criteria




Individual vs. group marks

Mark allocation method

Student provide feedback

Students


Cultivating community

Student involvement as measured by student/staff and student/student interaction is the most significant predictor of students’ academic success (Astin, 1997)

Cultivating community and increasing density of interactions

‘affinity space’, collaborative activity – group work social events


Large classes and assessment - economies of scale and improving learning

• Economies of scale in assessment without pedagogic underpinning threaten learning effectiveness

• A new model of assessment is needed to support independent learning

• Dependent on assessment literacy of students and staff

Documents

Large Classes & Assessment Professor Margaret Price Director ASKe Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange)