Upload
tansy-jessop
View
77
Download
1
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Good cop, bad cop? Cracking formative, using
summative well
Professor Tansy JessopTESTA Workshop
University College Dublin10 February 2017
Good cop, bad cop?
1) Low-risk, more frequent opportunities for students to learn from feedback (Sadler, 1989)
2) Helps students to fine-tune and understand requirements and standards (Boud 2000, Nicol, 2006)
3) Feedback to lecturers from formative tasks helps to adapt teaching (Hattie, 2009)
4) Engages students in cycles of reflection and collaboration (Biggs 2003; Nicol & McFarlane Dick 2006)
5) Encourages and distributes student effort (Gibbs 2004).
Why formative matters
What is formative assessment?
Formative assessment is concerned with how judgements about the quality of student responses can be used to shape and improve students’ competence by short-circuiting the randomness and inefficiency of trial-and-error learning (Sadler, 1989, p.120).
TESTA – ungraded, required, eliciting feedback
Why we struggle to do formative
Theory 1: Content drives our view of curriculum
Theory 2: Summative competes for time and effort with formative
If there weren’t loads of other assessments, I’d do it.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t afford to stay here. We’re off to do our assignment” (Harland, 2014).
Theory 3: Students are grades-oriented
It’s good to know you’re being graded because you take it more seriously.
I always find myself going to the library and going ‘These are the books related to this essay’ and that’s it.
Although you learn a lot more than you would if you were revising for an exam, because you have to do wider research and stuff, you still don’t do research really unless it’s directly related to essays.
Theory 4: Academics struggle with systemic problems and low student interest
I found the consequence of it not being officially part of the diet being that a hard core did it and no more.
At any particular assessment point... somebody in our department would probably have to read something between 300,000 and 0.5 million words.
You end up assessing for assessment’s sake rather than thinking about what the assessment is for.
We’re finding formative assessment more difficult as the numbers grow on the courses, and a lot of us now are thinking I can’t do this because it’s just so much extra time....
So, how do we do it?
Five case studies of successful formative
Your task will be to identify the principles that make them work
How could you adapt them?
Case Study 1: Business School
• Reduction from average 2 x summative, zero formative per module
• …to 1 x summative and 3 x formative• Required by students in entire business school• All working to similar script• Systematic shift, experimentation, less risky
together
Case Study 2: Social Sciences
• Education, Sociology and PGCAP degrees• Problem: silent seminar, students not reading• Public platform blogging• Current academic texts• In-class• Threads and live discussion• Linked to summative
Case Study 3: Media degree
• Media degree• Presentations formative• Students get feedback (peer and tutor)• Refines their thinking for…• Linked summative essay
Case study 4: Film and TV
• Seminar• Problem: lack of discrimination about sources• Students bring 1 x book, 1 x chapter, 1 x
journal article, 2 x pop culture articles• Justify choices to group• Reach consensus about five best sources
Case study 5: Engineering
• Engineering• Problem low averages• Course requirement to complete 50 problems• Peer assessed in six ‘lecture’ slots• Marks do not count• Lectures, problems, classes, exams unchanged• Exam marks increased from 45% to 85%
Your task
• In groups, identify five principles for making formative work. Write them down on flipchart paper.
• Devise one or two adaptations for your discipline, using the principles, and make one poster which outlines/draws your adaptation. You can be creative!
Becker, H. (1968) Making the grade: the academic side of college life. Boud, D. (2000) Sustainable Assessment: Rethinking assessment for the learning society, Studies in Continuing Education, 22: 2, 151 — 167.Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004) Conditions under which assessment supports students' learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. 1(1): 3-31.Hattie, J. (2007) The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research. 77(1) 81-112.Harland, T. et al. (2014) An Assessment Arms Race and its fallout: high-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship. Assessment and Evaluation inn Higher Education. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602938.2014.931927Nicol, D. J. and McFarlane-Dick, D. (2006) Formative Assessment and Self-Regulated Learning: A Model and Seven Principles of Good Feedback Practice. Studies in Higher Education. 31(2): 199-218.Jessop, T. (2017) Inspiring transformation through TESTA’s programme approach. In Carless (2017) Scaling up Assessment for Learning in HE. Singapore. Springer.Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. (2013) The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale study of students’ learning in response to different assessment patterns. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. ifirst.Jessop, T, McNab, N and Gubby, L. (2012) Mind the gap: An analysis of how quality assurance processes influence programme assessment patterns. Active Learning in Higher Education. 13(3). 143-154.Sadler, D.R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems, Instructional Science, 18, 119-144.Yorke, M. (2003) Formative assessment in higher education: Moves towards theory and the enhancement of pedagogic practice. Higher Education. 45
References