Students’ self-assessment as a tool for learning WORKSHOP Dr Claire Gray and Dr Nadine Schaefer April 2018 PedRIO Annual Conference, University of Plymouth

Outline of workshop Self-assessment in HE – working definition What were/are you thinking? – capturing your interest in and experiences of engaging in forms of self-assessment Using self-assessment in HE research – a research example Self-assessment in practice – what does that mean for your own professional contexts?

Self-assessment in HE – WHAT are we talking about? “Self-assessment refers to the involvement of learners in making judgements about their own learning, particularly about their achievements and the outcomes of their learning (Boud &Falchikov, 1989) (…). It is a way of increasing the role of students as active participants in their own learning (Boud, 1995)” (Dochy et al 1999, 334) “Self-assessment is a process of formative assessment during which students reflect on the quality of their work, judge the degree to which it reflects explicitly stated goals or criteria, and revise accordingly” (Andrade and Valtcheva 2009, 13) For Andrade and Valtcheva (2009, 13), self-assessment is different from self-evaluation – the latter capturing approaches that involve students in grading their work. They argue “Given what we know about human nature, as well as findings from research regarding students’ tendency to inflate self-evaluations when they will count toward formal grades (Boud & Falchikov, 1989), we subscribe to a purely formative type of student self-assessment”.

Self-assessment in HE – WHY? I “The era of testing can be characterised by a complete separation of instruction and testing activities, by a measurement that was passively undergone by the students, by measurement of knowledge of decontextualized subject matter that was unrelated to the student’s experiences, and by measuring products solely in the form of a single total score (Wolf et al 1991). The assessment era promotes integration of assessment and instruction, seeing the student as an active person who shares responsibility, reflects, collaborates and conducts a continuous dialogue with the teacher “( Dochy et al 1999, 331) “The main goal of higher education has moved towards supporting students to develop into ‘reflective practitioners’ who are able to reflect critically upon their own professional practice” (Dochy et al 1999, 332) The emphasise has moved from ‘teaching’ to ‘learning’ (Hanrahan & Isaacs, 2001)

Self-assessment in HE – WHY? II Self-assessment as a tool for developing a range of competencies: Cognitive competencies: such as problem solving, critical thinking Meta-cognitive competencies: such as self-reflection, self- evaluation Social competencies: such as leading discussions, co-operating Affective dispositions: such as internal motivation, responsibility, independence (see Dochy et al 1999, 332)

What were/are you thinking? What are your interests in and experiences of engaging in forms of self-assessment in HE? Experiences Challenges Opportunities Could hand out different coloured post its: e.g.: green for examples of using self-assessments Yellow: opportunities, value of self-assessment Red: challenges of engaging in self-assessment These will be collected at the front – and can be used for later phase of workshop NEEDED: Post its, flip chart marker, pens, flip chart paper

Using self-assessment in HE research – a research example Over 70 universities and colleges were involved in 13 collaborative projects to pilot and evaluate a range of approaches for measuring learning gain, funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Defining Learning Gain (LG): “the distance travelled (…) the difference between the skills, competencies, content knowledge and personal development demonstrated by students at two points in time.” (McGrath et al., 2015:XI) Our pilot project captured data around students’ attitudes and confidence in research methods addressing the ‘learner motivation’, ‘research orientations’ and ‘research self-efficacy’, aspects of the research preparedness framework (Shaw et al. 2013). One of the core research questions: How do undergraduates’ attitudes towards, and confidence in, research methods change through their undergraduate study?

Methodological approach to capturing learning gain Longitudinal, multi-method approach including: Reflective logs capturing students’ learning experiences of RM over the course of the project (n=70) Interviews with programme leads for contextualised understanding and capturing their expectation of student learning/progress (n=13) Interviews with project partners to reflect on ReSET tool (n=3), written feedback from partner institutions (n=5) Focus groups with students on research tool and project experience (n=4) Student performance data to examine if performance on a RM module can serve as a predictor of overall performance    Sample: 7(1 HEI / 6 College based HE providers), 6 disciplines(Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences & Science) Student self-reporting survey at Level 4 (n=186), L5 (n=132) and L6 (n=30)

Self-assessment as a tool for learning – students’ responses “It made me reflect, because I remembered doing it from the beginning of the year, I remember thinking oh crap, because I’m going to have to be doing all of this next year and I’m panicking. And to have now done it again and ticked so many boxes and going oh I’ve done that, oh I know what that is, it was really helpful to see what I have actually learnt and where I’ve got to”. “I really like this because when we did the first one I didn’t realise: oh yeah, I should do more of this and this. So it’s definitely good, if you’re in the first year or first time of doing it, it’s good to reflect, you don’t often get the chance to do that.”

Developing the RESet Toolkit to enhance students’ learning gains in research methods ‘Learning toolkit’ which allows students, with the support of research methods educators, to self-assess, reflect on and direct their future learning. Students self-assessing can inform student’s future learning (Lim et al 2012), it can, over the course of a module, promote and capture learning gain (Arico 2016). For this to be successful it requires explicit integration of a learning gain measure into the curriculum and for students to engage in a dialogue around their growing knowledge, skills and experience Toolkit strategies: let’s have a look…

Self-assessment in practice – what does that mean for your own professional contexts? We would like you to design your own self-assessment activity. To guide or spark off your thinking you might want to look at: The general conditions which Goodrich, 1996 (in Andrade and Valtechva, 2009: 13) has identified as crucial for designing effective self-assessment (see print out 1) the 3 steps outlined by Andrade and Valtechva (2009) that help to engage students in effective self-assessment (see print out 2)

Using self-assessment in HE Workshop outcomes To be filled out together with participants – capturing main outcomes of discussions. We could refer to print out 3/guidelines see Dochy et al 1999.

References Andrade, H. & Valtcheva, A. (2009) Promoting Learning and Achievement Through Self- Assessment. Theory Into Practice, 48: 12-19 Arico, F. (2016). Promoting active learning through peer-instruction and self-assessment: A toolkit to design, support and evaluate teaching. Educational Developments, 17.1, 15-18. Dochy, F., Segers, M. & Sluijsmans, D. (1999) The use of self-, peer and co-assessment in higher education: A review. Studies in Higher Education, 24:3, 331-350 Hanrahan, S. & Isaacs, G. (2001) Assessing Self- and Peer-assessment: The students’ views. Higher Education Research & Development, 20:1, 53-70 Lim, B., Hosack, B., & Vogt, P. (2012). A framework for measuring student learning gains and engagement in an introductory computing course: A preliminary report of findings. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 10(4), 428-440. Turner, R., Sutton, C., Muneer, R., Gray, C., Schaefer, N. & Swain, J. (2018) Exploring the potential of using undergraduates’ knowledge, skills and experience in research methods as a proxy for capturing learning gain, Higher Education Pedagogies, 3:1, 110-136, DOI: 10.1080/23752696.2018.1449127