1. Creative assessment and feedback
Brookes Learning and Teaching Conference
June 2018

2. Current assessment and feedback practices
In your groups, please discuss the following questions:
What different kinds of assessment do you use currently and why?
When and how do you give feedback to students?
Do you come across any recurring issues? If so, how do you address them?

3. The students’ views Three focus groups: Early Childhood (9 students)
Education Studies (7 students)
BA Primary (6 students)
The focus groups were facilitated by Poppy Hoole and Linet Arthur. Each one lasted around an hour. Students were all asked the same questions. In this summary, only the responses concerning assessment and feedback are included.

4. Types of assessment Essay Groupwork presentation Performance in groups
Critical review
Thematic review
Report critiquing policy
Child profile analysing behaviour
Glossary
Leaflet/review
Reflection as part of an assignment
Online discussions
Folder summarising either a module or the year’s work
Activities in sessions
Poster
Blog
Observation linked to an essay
Interview and essay using the interview as evidence

5. Assessment tasks
Students prefer a choice for assignments with ideas or suggestions. In the first and second years they found it harder to choose: "I struggled to come up with a title in the first year – now it's easier". Students said that too much choice at the beginning was overwhelming. In the first year they would prefer a choice of, say, six titles rather than having a free choice.
Essays are what they are used to: more information is needed for other types of assessment.
Where activities are not graded, students would like to know how they will benefit from doing them.

6. Impact on learning
It is sometimes difficult for students to use feedback from one type of assessment to help them with a different type.
Although module-specific feedback is helpful, more general comments which can feed-forward are better as this can help students to prepare for the next module.
It is useful for lecturers to remind students how their feedback will help in other modules.

7. Timing
Students prefer assessments to be sequenced so that their deadlines are not all bunched together.
Topics that come late in the semester are unlikely to be chosen for the assessment because students need time to prepare the assignment.
Students need feedback from one assignment before the deadline for the next one.

8. Preparation for the assessment
Students like:
Assessment workshop
Formative feedback on drafts/short drafts: “When we had to do a critical analysis of research papers, we could do a practice with a different research paper. That was helpful and showed us how to improve.”
Demonstration of how different topics link to the assessment
Framework for the assessment with questions such as “How would I tackle that?“
Review of a sample assignment and how it has been marked
“Some lecturers want you to do well: ‘This is what it looks like’.”

9. When to discuss the assessment
Students had different views:
From the start
Five or ten minutes on the assignment each week
Varies depending on which year the students are in. “First years need to know everything and so need more information but in the first semester it's too much to take everything in, so lecturers giving expectations for the assignment in week three would be too daunting.” Second and third years would like the information in weeks 2 to 4. “Week 10 is too late because a lot of lecturers do it then and it creates too much pressure, trying to write all the assignments at the same time.”

10. Feedback
Feedback needs to demonstrate a positive response to students’ efforts.
Lecturers need to be specific and unambiguous. Clear feedback also shows that lecturers have a fair point in giving the mark.
Examples are always helpful to demonstrate what students need to do.
The most beneficial feedback is what students need to work on.

11. Feedback
Feedback considered to be helpful included comments such as "these are good points, expand on these"; "you've done well at this" – indicating what works.
When feedback is very negative, students find it hard to continue reading it. This tends to happen with comments on the text – the occasional "good point" encourages them to keep going.
"The best feedback I got was a lecturer who asked had I planned the structure? Now I think about how to plan and what should go in the introduction."

12. Peer feedback
Students feel that they should be supporting each other. They liked the "two stars and a wish" approach.
Some said that they found it easier to understand feedback from other students than from the tutor, because their friends gave more explanation.
Students need to be able to trust the person giving them feedback: it is quite daunting if they don’t know them.
They wondered whether their peers are qualified to judge their work.
It’s helpful to be reminded of the marking criteria through providing peer feedback.

13. Ways of encouraging students to learn from feedback
All the students (in the 3 focus groups) thought that it would be helpful to go through their feedback with their academic adviser, and thought it should be made compulsory.
Students liked the idea of another column in the assessment grid commenting on what they have done in response to previous feedback.
Students would like the option of talking to their module leader about their feedback the following term even for half an hour (but they recognised that those who have done badly may feel too embarrassed to attend).

14. Consistency
Students recognise that there are differences between lecturers in terms of expectations, for example in relation to the use of the first person, grammar, referencing and subtitles: “Every lecturer has their own preferences. It is helpful when lecturers tell you what these are.” “Lecturers need to be very clear about what they want.”
Students find it hard when a different person does the marking from the lecturer who taught them as the marker may have different expectations.
Where two lecturers teach a module, it is important for them to give consistent information about the assessment. Students would prefer all the papers to be marked by one of the lecturers to ensure fairness.

15. Fairness
When students have different deadlines (eg for groupwork presentations across a double module) they need to be reassured that some groups do not have an advantage, for example, by going last.
Students like the feedback to demonstrate the fairness of the mark.
Students only need to be told once about an error, even if they have repeated the same mistake throughout the assignment.
Students need to be reassured that the preferences of a particular marker do not disadvantage them.

16. Groupwork
Students like groupwork but are concerned about the fairness of the assessment. The students who don’t work get the same mark as the students who do.
Writing a paragraph about what you have contributed to the task which is then signed by all the students was considered helpful by one group but too daunting by another (they would prefer to make this anonymous).

17. Blue card issues
Students like it if the marker writes "I've noted your blue card" at the beginning of their feedback. This is particularly reassuring if the blue card is missing when assessed work is returned.
Students with blue cards welcome feedback on how to improve their writing as long as they are reassured that they have not been marked down for it.

18. And finally…
“It's nice when lecturers interact, so we feel that we're working together for the same thing.”
"When they really care about you it's nice. I want them to be proud".