Rebuilding the broken feedback relationship through TESTA’s

programme approach

Tansy JessopEnhancing Feedback in Y1 Symposium

Maynooth University, Dublin#y1feedback @tansyjtweets

Powerful feedback

• Think of a time you received powerful feedback.

• What three words spring to mind about that feedback?

• Go to www.menti.com and use the code 48 01 25

The TESTA Methodology

Programme Team

Meeting

Assessment Experience

Questionnaire(AEQ)

TESTAProgramme

Audit

Student Focus Groups

Based on assessment principles

• ‘Time-on-task’ (Gibbs 2004)• Challenging and high expectations (Chickering and

Gamson 1987)• Internalising goals and standards (Sadler 1989; Nicol

and McFarlane-Dick 2006)• Prompt, detailed, specific, developmental, dialogic

feedback (Gibbs 2004; Nicol 2010)• Deep learning (Marton and Saljo 1976).

Sustained growth

TESTA….

“…is a way of thinking about assessment and feedback”

Graham Gibbs

TESTA reveals the whole elephant…

Key findings from TESTA

1. Modular design makes feedback less effective

2. Modules squeeze out formative tasks and feedback

3. There is a missing relational dimension

Defining the terms

• Summative assessment carries a grade which counts toward the degree classification.

• Formative assessment does not count towards the degree (either pass/fail or a grade), elicits comments and is required to be done by all students.

Modular design problems

• High summative assessment loads

Range of UK summative assessment 12-227 over three years

• Trivialises feedback for students

• Burdensome for lecturers

1. Modular design problems

Does IKEA 101 work for complex learning?

Content Vs Concepts?

The best approach from the student’s perspective is to focus on concepts. I’m sorry to break it to you, but your students are not going to remember 90 per cent – possibly 99 per cent – of what you teach them unless it’s conceptual…. when broad, over-arching connections are made, education occurs. Most details are only a necessary means to that end.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-students-lecture-to-rofessors/2013238.fullarticle#.U3orx_f9xWc.twitter

A Student’s lecture to her professor

Take five: in pairs

• Choose a student quote that strikes you.

• What is the key issue?

• What strategies might address this issue?

What students say…

The feedback is generally focused on the module.

It’s difficult because your assignments are so detached from the next one you do for that subject. They don’t relate to each other.

Because it’s at the end of the module, it doesn’t feed into our future work.

I read it and think “Well, that’s fine but I’ve already handed it in now and got the mark. It’s too late”.

Strategies to connect feedback

• Cyclical coversheets with self-evaluation

• Multi-stage tasks with feedforward

• Feedback synthesis tasks

• Curriculum design strategies

• Low formative: summative ratio 1:8 on 73 UK degrees

• Very few students describe encountering formative tasks.

• Formative feedback is rare, yet brings ‘significant learning gains’ (Black and Wiliam 1998).

2. Modules squeezes out formative tasks

What students say about barriers to formative

• If there weren’t loads of other assessments, I’d do it.

• If there are no actual consequences of not doing it, most students are going to sit in the bar.

• The lecturers do formative assessment but we don’t get any feedback on it.

What TESTA programmes have done…

• Rebalance formative and summative

• Formative as required gateway tasks

• Multi-stage linked formative-summative

• Public domain tasks

• Authentic tasks

3. Missing relational dimension

Mass higher education

Huge marking loads

Marker = teacher?

Risk-averse quality apparatus

Anonymous marking

What students say

Because they have to mark so many that our essay becomes lost in the sea that they have to mark.

It was like ‘Who’s Holly?’ It’s that relationship where you’re just a student.

Here they say ‘Oh yes, I don’t know who you are. Got too many to remember, don’t really care, I’ll mark you on your assignment’.

Take five: in pairs

• What is your view of giving personal feedback?

• What challenges does it pose?

A quick case study

I’m baffled. Students love my

feedback but they are a voice

in the wilderness…

TESTA programme strategies

• Formative feedback – informal, immediate, conversational

• Peer feedback

• Audio and screencast feedback

• Blogging on academic texts with informal threads

• Developmental feedback (measuring performance against past performance)

Shifting the educational paradigm from…

Transmission Model

Social Constructivist Model

ReferencesArum, R. and Roksa. J. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press.Barlow, A. and Jessop, T. (2016) “You can’t write a load of rubbish”: why blogging works as formative assessment. Educational Developments 17(3) Boud, D. and Molloy, E (2013) Rethinking models of feedback for learning: the challenge of design Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38:6, 698-712 Boud, D. and Molloy, E (2013) Feedback in Higher and Professional Education. Understanding it and doing it better. Abingdon. Routledge.Boud, D. and Falchikov, N. (2007) Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education. Abingdon. Routledge.Dweck, C. (2006) Mindset: How can fulfil your potential. Robinson.

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.

Hughes, G. (2014) Ipsative Assessment. Basingstoke. Palgrave MacMillan.

Jessop, T. (2017) Inspiring transformation through TESTA’s programme approach. Scaling up Assessment for Learning in Higher Education. Singapore. Springer.

Jessop, T. And Tomas, C. (2016) The implications of programme assessment patterns for student learning. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education.

Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. (2014). The Influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student learning: a comparative study. Studies in Higher Education. Published Online 27 August 2014

Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. (2014) 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. 39(1) 73-88.

Nicol, D. (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher education.Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35: 5, 501 – 517.

Nicol, D. 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.

Sadler, D.R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18, 119-144.

TESTA (2009-16) Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment (www.testa.ac.uk)