CAA 2013: Closing address
Dr Erica Morris - Academic Lead (Assessment and Feedback)
Themes and threads
• CAA Conference themes
• Emerging threads
• Re-visiting frameworks for
assessment practice
• Assessment for learning
• Summarising issues
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CAA Conference 2013: themes
• Evaluation
– Costs and benefits, student views, comparison of systems
• Reporting
– Strategies for effective use, innovation in results handing
• Innovation
– Question types, use of technology to underpin innovation,
collaborative assessment
• Assessing skills and enhancing student learning
– Higher order skills, pedagogical issues in question design, effective
feedback
• Strategic developments
– Department or institutional wide initiatives, staffing issues
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Emerging threads
• Ensuring student engagement
• Devising richer assessments:
forms and design
• Unpacking feedback
• Extending staff learning and
development
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Re-visiting frameworks and principles
Author, date
Origins
Approach, tools
Boud and
Associates (2010)
Experts in assessment
research and academic
development, and senior
managers.
A proposal for reform,
providing seven propositions
with three underlying
principles.
Gibbs and Simpson
(2004-05)
A review of theory, empirical
evidence and practical
experience on assessment
and student learning.
A set of ‘conditions under
which assessment supports
learning’.
Nicol (n.d)
Adaptation of Gibbs and
Simpson (2004), and Nicol
and Macfarlane-Dick (2006),
giving principles that
informed the work on the
Reengineering Assessment
Practices (REAP) project.
Eleven principles of good
assessment design – can be
used to guide the design of
assessment and feedback in
higher and further education.
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Assessment for learning
Students
developing
as learners
Authentic
assessment
Informal
feedback
Formative
and
summative
Formal
feedback
Adapted from Sambell, McDowell
and Montgomery (2012, p5)
Practice,
rehearsal
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Assessment for learning: principles
• Holistic model, an overall approach
– Authentic assessment – engaging and meaningful tasks
– Students developing as learners – effective attributes and skills to selfassess and evaluate their own learning
– Informal feedback – encouraged, used throughout a programme (e.g.
in-class group discussions, peer-review)
– Formal feedback – range of forms of feedback, used at a number of
stages
– Practice, rehearsal – opportunities to learn and practice (e.g. using
linked assignments)
– Formative and summative – providing an appropriate mix of these two
key types of assessments
Sambell, McDowell and Montgomery (2012)
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Summarising issues
• Developing rationales for technologyenhanced assessment
– Questioning about ‘underpinning theory’
• A broader conception of effective feedback
– Considering process in learning
– Design and delivery (e.g. audio feedback)
– Implications of e-marking on practice
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Summarising issues
• Staff development, innovation
and wider change
‘Imaginative use of digital technologies
could be transformational for teaching
and learning … The problem is that
transformation is more about the
human and organisational aspects of
teaching and learning than it is about
the use of technology’ (Laurillard,
2007, pxvii)
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References and resources
Boud, D. and Associates (2010). Assessment 2020: Seven propositions for assessment reform in higher
education. Sydney: Australian Learning and Teaching Council.
Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2004-5) Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports Students’
Learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1, 3-29.
Laurillard, D. (2007) Foreward. In H. Beetham and R. Sharpe (Eds), Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital
Age. Designing and delivering e-learning. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Nicol, D. (n.d) Assessment and feedback principles.
http://www.reap.ac.uk/Portals/101/Documents/Theory%20and%20Practice/REAP%20principles.p
df
Nicol, D. (n.d) Assessment principles: some possible candidates.
http://www.reap.ac.uk/reap/resourcesPrinciples.html
Sambell, K., McDowell, L. and Montgomery, C. (2013) Assessment for Learning in Higher Education.
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
The Higher Education Academy (2012) A Marked Improvement: Transforming assessment in higher
education. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assessment
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