Feedback for learning: a
workshop for Edinburgh
Napier University
22 September 2011
Professor Sally Brown
Emeritus Professor, Leeds Metropolitan
University,
Adjunct professor, University of the
Sunshine Coast, and James Cook
University, Queensland,
Visiting Professor University of Plymouth.
By the end of this workshop, you will
have had opportunities to:
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Discuss the impact feedback can have on
students’ learning and success;
Consider what some international experts
have to say about what comprises effective
feedback;
Explore how feedback and ‘feed-forward’ can
link to effective learning;
Review a range of means by which feedback
can be delivered effectively and efficiently.
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What do your 2011 NSS scores
tell you?
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You have made some improvements on the
2010 scores across the board;
Some subject areas (e.g. English studies,
Finance, Law, Nursing, Sociology, Sports
Science) do better than others;
Further work is needed to improve
satisfaction with promptness, detail and
clarifying understanding;
Feedback and assessment still continue to
be lower rated nationally than other areas.
To reiterate:
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NSS scores are an unreliable indicator as
they can be skewed by all kinds of
extraneous factors, but do give us some
hints on what we should be doing;
Attempts to massage NSS scores usually
fail;
It is much more sensible and worthwhile to
concentrate on improving the student
experience of assessment and feedback,
since these are so central to enhancing the
student experience.
Why does assessment matter so
much?
“Assessment methods and requirements
probably have a greater influence on how
and what students learn than any other
single factor. This influence may well be of
greater importance than the impact of
teaching materials” (Boud 1988)
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To improve assessment we
should realign it by:
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Exploring ways in which assessment can be
made integral to learning.
Constructively aligning (Biggs 2003)
assignments with planned learning
outcomes and the curriculum taught:
Providing realistic tasks: students are likely
to put more energy into assignments they
see as authentic and worth bothering with;
Providing faster, more effective and more
detailed feedback.
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Good feedback practice
1. Helps clarify what good performance is (goals,
criteria, expected standards);
2. Facilitates the development of self-assessment
(reflection) in learning;
3. Delivers high quality information to students about
their learning;
4. Encourages teacher and peer dialogue around
learning;
5. Encourages positive motivational beliefs and selfesteem;
6. Provides opportunities to close the gap between
current and desired performance;
7. Provides information to teachers that can be used to
help shape the teaching. (Nicol and Macfarlane Dick)
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Assessment for learning
1. Tasks should be challenging, demanding higher order learning
and integration of knowledge learned in both the university and
other contexts;
2. Learning and assessment should be integrated, assessment
should not come at the end of learning but should be part of
the learning process;
3. Students are involved in self assessment and reflection on their
learning, they are involved in judging performance;
4. Assessment should encourage metacognition, promoting
thinking about the learning process not just the learning
outcomes;
5. Assessment should have a formative function, providing
‘feedforward’ for future learning which can be acted upon.
There is opportunity and a safe context for students to expose
problems with their study and get help; there should be an
opportunity for dialogue about students’ work;
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Assesment for learning 2
6. Assessment expectations should be made visible to
students as far as possible;
7. Tasks should involve the active engagement of
students developing the capacity to find things out
for themselves and learn independently;
8. Tasks should be authentic; worthwhile, relevant and
offering students some level of control over their
work;
9. Tasks are fit for purpose and align with important
learning outcomes
10. Assessment should be used to evaluate teaching
as well as student learning
(Sue Bloxham, unpublished paper for HEA)
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Formative and summative
assessment
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Formative assessment is primarily
concerned with feedback aimed at prompting
improvement, is often continuous and
usually involves words.
Summative assessment is concerned with
making evaluative judgments, is often end
point and involves numbers.
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Providing faster, more effective and
more detailed feedback is hard
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But numerous studies (and the NSS, plus
other measures of student satisfaction) tell
us that student really want to see
improvements in this area above all others;
There are clear links between good feedback
and effective learning;
Post-92 universities in tough times need a
competitive edge: supporting learning
through good feedback makes good
business sense.
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Some ways in which we can
give feedback faster
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Use ‘exploded’ model answers;
Give whole cohort feedback in the form of an
oral or written report in the classroom;
Harness statement banks;
Use assignment return sheets;
Involve students in their own and each
other’s assessment (inter & intra peer group
plus self assessment);
Make better use of computer-aided
assessment.
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Assessment matters
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Effective assessment significantly and positively impacts
on student learning, (Boud, Mentkowski, Knight and Yorke
and many others).
Assessment shapes student behaviour (marks as money)
and poor assessment encourages strategic behaviour
(Kneale). Clever course developers utilise this tendency
and design assessment tools that foster the behaviours
we would wish to see (for example, logical sequencing,
fluent writing, effective referencing and good time
management).
Feed-forward (Gibbs et al) shapes student behaviour by
focussing information and advice for students on future
performance in assignments, not just ‘correciones’.
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Setting good patterns
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Students rarely respond positively to exhortation or vague
threats of poor marks: we need to change the assessment
practices so that they make routine these behaviours very
early on in a their HE career.
Yorke (1999) encourages us to believe that the first six
weeks of the first semester of the first year are crucial and
that how we assess within that period can make a
difference to student success or failure.
Avoidance of assessment in Semester One doesn’t solve
the problem. Designing a really coherent first six weeks
for students, which includes assessment opportunities
can be very helpful.
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Diverse and innovative
assessment helps
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Traditional assessment methods tend to reinforce rather
limited approaches to learning by students, by
encouraging memorisation, unproductive rote learning
and attitude to knowledge acquisition that are reminiscent
of the language of eating disorders (stuffing in and
regurgitation of facts). We need to utilise a wide range of
assessment methods and approaches.
Innovative assessment approaches can foster a spirit of
enquiry, encourage curiosity and promote autonomy
where they encourage students to become closely
involved with evaluating their own and each others’
learning. (Falchikov, Pickford and Brown, 2006).
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Sound and frequent
assessment
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Students need regular feedback so they can improve
performance at a time when this can make a difference;
Students need to see examples of good work so they can
evaluate their own work effectively;
Good assessment is valid, reliable, practical,
developmental, manageable, cost-effective, fit for
purpose, relevant, authentic, inclusive, closely linked to
learning outcomes and fair;
We should explore whether it is possible also to make it
enjoyable for staff and students;
Incremental assessment has more value in promoting
student learning than end-point ‘sudden death’
approaches.
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Helping students understand
and use feedback
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Frequent, formative feedback impacts positively on student
learning and we need to re-engineer practices to make this
possible;
The UK Open University inter alia is keen to promote feedforward as well as feedback, prompting students to use
advice from one assignment to inform their actions prior to
the next one.
Students need convincing that assignments are not just
‘make work’ or punishing tasks. We need to win their hearts
and minds to recognise that assessment is integral to their
learning and is a crucial part of it.
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Students giving feedback to peers
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Can be hugely beneficial if managed effectively (but
there are no quick fixes!);
Students will need training or refreshing in purposes
and practices of peer feedback;
Work on language use is crucial since students can
be very harsh on one another: training may be
necessary to help them build a repertoire of
formative feedback responses;
Building students’ expertise in giving peer feedback
helps them get more from the feedback they receive.
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Learning from Royce Sadler
“Assessment is a high-stakes activity for students, and has a
major impact on how they approach learning. Regardless of
innovations in assessment techniques, developments in
interpretive frameworks and increased adaptability made
possible by new and forthcoming technologies, the core
activities that cover the design and production of appropriate
assessment tasks, the emphasis on higher-order cognitive
outcomes, the criteria for appraisal, the assignment and
interpretation of marks and grades, and the overall
maintenance of academic standards clearly remain ongoing
responsibilities for the higher education enterprise as whole.”
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Learning from Graham Gibbs
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Assessment has more impact on how students go about
studying – on the quantity and quality of effort, and on
performance – than does teaching.
It is sometimes relatively easy (and often cheap or free) to
change student learning by changing assessment,
provided the ‘conditions’ are met effectively.
Whole universities have implicit conventions about what
is ‘acceptable’ in terms of assessment practice, and
formal rules that determine patterns of assessment.
Some of these conventions and rules are ill-informed and
damaging … and are built in to QA systems.
Assessment systems seem to work partly through social
processes, rather than through documentation.
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Advice from Gibbs
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Have pass/fail modules that lead, in a subsequent
semester, into a summatively assessed module that
assesses a number of previous pass/fail modules. Use
‘capstone’ modules that assess higher level learning
outcomes, and do this with large, complex, demanding
assignments or examinations.
Increase the use of course requirements that capture and
distribute student effort, without student work being
marked.
Sample these requirements for marking purposes,
increasing the risk to students of not taking all of them
seriously.
Use frequent ‘quick and dirty’ feedback mechanisms with
rapid ‘turn-round’ and discuss feedback and student work
in class.
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More advice
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Increase the size and length of modules so that there is
scope for sequences of assignments that support
progression, and fewer occasions when summative
assessment is necessary.
Use student marking exercises and exemplars to
communicate standards and criteria, not ever more
detailed specifications.
Reduce the variety of types of assessment so that
students have some chance to come to understand,
through practice and feedback, how to tackle each at a
reasonably sophisticated level.
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Conclusions
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The changes we make to improve the student
experience are important in their own right,
not just in response to poor NSS scores;
It is possible to make significant
improvements, but it needs a strategic
approach, ideally at institutional level;
Strategic approaches aren’t worth a fig if
individual markers don’t embrace the need to
work hard to improve feedback;
Doing the same things we have always done
in the same way we have always done them
is doomed to failure.
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References (1)
Assessment Reform Group (1999) Assessment for Learning : Beyond the black
box Cambridge UK, University of Cambridge School of Education
Biggs J And Tang C (2007) Teaching for Quality Learning at University Open
University Press
Bloxham, S, and Boyd, P.(2007) Developing assessment in Higher education: a
practical guide. Open University press Buckingham
Bloxham, S. Assessment for Learning, Unpublished paper for HEA
Boud, D. (1995) Enhancing learning through self-assessment London:
Routledge.
Brown, G. with Bull, J. and Pendlebury, M. (1997) Assessing Student Learning in
Higher Education London: Routledge.
Brown, S. and Glasner, A. (ed.) (1999) Assessment Matters in Higher Education,
Choosing and Using Diverse Approaches, Maidenhead: Open University
Press.
Brown, S. and Knight, P. (1994) Assessing Learners in Higher Education,
London: Kogan Page.
Brown, S. (2011) Bringing about positive change in the higher education student
experience: a case study, Quality Assurance in Education, Volume 19 No 3
forthcoming
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Brown, S. Rust, C. & Gibbs, G. (1994) Strategies for Diversifying
Assessment
Oxford Centre for Staff Development.
References (2)
Crooks T. (1988) Assessing student performance HERDSA Green Guide No 8
HERDSA (reprinted 1994)
Falchikov, N. (2004) Improving Assessment through Student Involvement:
Practical Solutions for Aiding Learning in Higher and Further Education,
London: Routledge.
Gibbs, G. (1999) Using assessment strategically to change the way students
learn, In Brown S. & Glasner, A. (eds.), Assessment Matters in Higher
Education: Choosing and Using Diverse Approaches Maidenhead:
SRHE/Open University Press.
Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004) ‘Conditions under which assessment supports
students' learning’ Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31
Available at
http://www.glos.ac.uk/shareddata/dms/2B70988BBCD42A03949CB4F3CB78
A516.pdf (accessed 24 May 2007)
Kneale, P. E. (1997) The rise of the "strategic student": how can we adapt to
cope? in Armstrong, S., Thompson, G. and Brown, S. (eds) Facing up to
Radical Changes in Universities and Colleges, 119-139 London: Kogan
Page.
Knight, P. and Yorke, M. (2003) Assessment, learning and employability
Maidenhead, UK: SRHE/Open University Press.
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References (3)
Mentkowski, M. and associates (2000) p.82 Learning that lasts: integrating
learning development and performance in college and beyond San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Nicol, D J and Macfarlane-Dick: Formative assessment and self-regulated
learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice.
Studies in Higher Education (2006), Vol 31(2), 199-218
Pickford, R. and Brown, S. (2006) Assessing skills and practice London:
Routledge.
Race, P. (2001) A Briefing on Self, Peer & Group Assessment in LTSN
Generic Centre Assessment Series No 9 LTSN York.
Race P. (2006) The lecturer’s toolkit (3rd edition) London: Routledge.
Rust, C., Price, M. and O’Donovan, B. (2003) Improving students’ learning
by developing their understanding of assessment criteria and
processes Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 28 (2),
147-164.
Sadler, R. (2008) Assessment of Higher Education in International
Encyclopaedia of Education
Yorke, M. (1999) Leaving Early: Undergraduate Non-completion in Higher
Education, London: Routledge.
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