Developing Assessment and Learning Dr Peter Kahn University of Manchester

Outline Introduction Characteristics of effective learning Designing assessment to ensure effective learning –Case study: the patchwork text Adapting your own practice –Discussion in pairs/threes

Aims To explore how assessment drives student learning. To analyse and develop your own assessment practice in the light of: –characteristics of effective learning; –factors influencing the relationship between assessment and student learning; – a variety of assessment methods.

Introduction Purposes for assessment: –assessment as a driver for learning; –assessment to grade students. Need to ensure more efficient assessment while still grading and supporting learning.

What proportion of the total learning time do your students spend in-class as compared to out-of-class?

‘Assessment is the most powerful lever teachers have to influence the way students respond to courses and behave as learners.’ Gibbs (1999) Recent developments in Higher Education only increase its power: –Student fees, employment, competition for graduate employment.

Effective learning Consider a specific course unit or programme in which you are involved. –What do you ideally want the learning on this course unit or programme to look like? –How would you like it to be characterised?

One possible ‘wish list’ Students regularly spend time on task Students prioritise complex tasks Students get frequent feedback Students interact with each other Students take responsibility for the quality of their work adapted from Gibbs (1999)

Does the assessment on your course unit or programme currently promote learning of this nature? –Detail both the ways in which it promotes this type of learning, and how it promotes other (perhaps less desirable) types of learning.

Designing assessment Explicitly consider the match between a range of possible assessment tasks and the desired learning. Value of programme-wide and synoptic approaches to assessment, creating space for a focus on learning.

The patchwork text... A coursework assignment that is: –cumulative, multi-voiced, synoptic, structurally unified, reflective, critical, lends itself to peer and formative feedback, and confidence-building. (see Winter, Parker and Ovens, 2003)

Adapting practice Share with one or two colleagues your earlier deliberations on assessment and the characteristics of effective learning. –What specific changes can you introduce into your own assessment to better reflect the desired learning?

Acknowledgements Gibbs G (1999) Using assessment strategically to change the way students learn, in Assessment Matters in Higher Education, eds Brown S and Glasner A, Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, Maidenhead, pp Winter R, Parker J and Ovens P (eds) (2003) The Patchwork Text: a radical re-assessment of coursework assignments, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 40(2) Knight P (2000) The value of a programme-wide approach to assessment, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 25(3),

Addendum Apply a similar process to analyse the effectiveness of all the methods that you use to support student learning!