Using assessment to improve students learning

1
Using assessment to improve students learning

• Lin Norton
• Centre for Learning and Teaching
• because we never stop learning

2
The purpose of this workshop is to..

• give you time and space to reflect on and
  discuss some of the current maxims about
  assessment
• think through some practical and doable ways of
  redesigning assessment in your modules/programmes
  to encourage effective learning
• provide you with some further resources and
  guidance on where to go for further information.
• It is not about suggesting..
• what assessment methods you should use
• a theoretical underpinning for assessment for
  learning
• tips and techniques for innovative assessment.
• By the end, you will hopefully as a team, have
  come to some sort of collective agreement about
  what you want your assessment strategy to achieve
  and how you might begin to get there.

3
What are your views about assessment for
learning?

• This warm up task is adapted from a resource
  provided by the Assessment for learning CETL at
  http//northumbria.ac.uk/cetl_afl/
• In subject teams/groups sort out the statements
  into two categories those that promote learning
  (green) and those that stifle learning (red)
• Share with colleagues

4
Why redesign your current assessment?

• Its time consuming
• Students are over-assessed
• Students take a strategic approach (i.e do whats
  necessary and no more)
• It doesnt help them learn
• Other reasons?

5
How shall we assess for learning?The role of
authentic assessment

• Forget, for the moment, about learning outcomes
  and constructive alignment
• Think instead of authentic assessment defined by
  Wiggins (1990)
• Assessment is authentic when we directly
  examine student performance on worthy
  intellectual tasks. Traditional assessment, by
  contrast, relies on indirect or proxy 'items
  -efficient, simplistic substitutes from which we
  think valid inferences can be made about the
  student's performance at those valued
  challenges.
• Look at characteristics of authentic assessment
  (h/o) and compare your modules current
  assessment practice against each of these.
• Wiggins, Grant (1990). The case for authentic
  assessment. Practical Assessment, Research
  Evaluation, 2(2). Retrieved April 13, 2007 from
  http//PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v2n2 .

6
How shall we assess for learning? The role of
formative assessment

• Forget, for the moment, about imparting knowledge
  
• Think instead about how formative assessment
  could be used to support your students learning.
• Formative assessment is defined by Leskes (2002)
  as
• the gathering of information about student
  learning-during the progression of a course or
  program and usually repeatedly-to improve the
  learning of those students. Example reading the
  first lab reports of a class to assess whether
  some or all students in the group need a lesson
  on how to make them succinct and informative.
• Consider how your module could build in
  opportunities for checking on how your students
  are learning- for you and for them
• Consider feedback

7
How shall we assess for learning?The role of
feedback

• This exercise has been designed by Phil Race
  'first published on the website of the ILTHE in
  2002' and is available in http//www.phil-race.co
  m/files/Using20feedback20to20help20students20
  to20learn.pdf
• Feedback balancing learning payoff and
  efficiency
• How can we think about efficiency and learning
  payoff at once? In two dimensions

High learning payoff
Efficient
Not efficient
Low learning payoff
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The feedback task (Race at http//www.phil-race.c
om/downloads.html

• On post-its jot down (one on each) each of the
  different methods you presently use to deliver
  feedback to your students. Also jot down other
  feedback methods you have thought of developing
  in your own work.
• Shuffle the post-its according to the level of
  learning payoff that you believe each method
  achieves, on average, with your students.
• In subject teams/groups, arrange that the methods
  delivering high learning payoff drift towards the
  top of the grid
• Further shuffle the post-its according to the
  degree of efficiency (in terms of your time) you
  feel that each method achieves. Move the most
  time-efficient methods towards the left, the
  less-efficient ones towards the right.
• Decide into which box of the grid above each
  method fits most closely. Are there any surprises
  to you in your conclusions?
• Share with colleagues

9
How shall we assess for learning?Taking account
of student expectations

• Using tools and questionnaires available at
  http//stadium.open.ac.uk/perspectives/assessment/
  
• The Assessment Experience Questionnaire (AEQ)
  developed by Gibbs and Simpson (2003)
• The SHUq, developed by Sheffield Hallam
  University (2004) focuses on levels of feedback
  received by students, and the degree to which and
  in what ways feedback helps.
• The Feedback coding tool developed by the Open
  University (2005) provides categories of feedback
  and the codes used to record them, definitions
  and examples of each category, and a recording
  sheet to be completed for each assignment, to log
  the frequency of occurrence of each type of
  feedback.

10
So what will you do now?

• Share with each other one concrete action that
  you will take to change assessment practice in
  your subject team