Key Assessment Strategy principles: Holistic design, ongoing and developmental, sequenced and connected, shared and balanced, inclusivity embedded, manageable timing and load, practice and feedback, constructive and actionable, produced for a wider audience, creativity and agency, has value beyond the classroom
What is the assessment approach?
In Music and Sex, a Year 3 unit on the BA Music programme, students are assessed using an individual portfolio. Students choose any five weeks of the course to write a portfolio contribution on, in the form of a 600-word blog post summarising the key points of the material encountered in pre-class reading and responding to it critically. Students must submit all five blog posts to gain credit for the unit. Towards the end of the unit, students select three entries to submit without revision as their portfolio for a summative mark.
How is feedback given?
Students have multiple opportunities to receive formative feedback on their contributions. In addition to getting informal written comments via email, students can arrange to meet Florian individually twice during the unit to receive oral feedback on their writing.
Since all blog posts are visible to all members of the cohort, and students are required to respond to their peers’ reflections, students benefit from peer as well as tutor feedback. This feedback can then inform students’ contributions to class discussions, which are themselves opportunities for them to receive additional feedback on what they have written.
“Students can test what they’ve written against the conversation.”
How is this approach different? What are some of the design features?
Scaffolding
Students are provided with scaffolds to support them in writing effective blog posts. In the first teaching session, Florian goes through the assessment criteria with students and asks them to create their first post in groups, before conducting whole-class feedback. Engaging in peer feedback throughout the unit provides further opportunities for students to develop their understanding of what ‘good’ looks like.
Little and often
By asking students to submit contributions ‘little and often’, the portfolio assessment approach promotes continuous student engagement. It also avoids bunching of assessments around the final reading ahead of class, arriving well prepared and able to contribute. It also helps Florian plan each class by identifying areas of the reading to focus on.
What was the rationale for this approach? What problems or challenges was it trying to address?
Previously, assessment on BA Music had been essay- and exam-based, which Florian found problematic. Students received a large amount of feedback at the end of the unit but were unable to apply it to their future learning. Moving assessment away from the end of the unit provided more opportunities for feedback and more opportunities for students to engage with feedback, making the process more efficient and impactful.
“What’s the point in giving feedback they can’t use?”
Florian also found it frustrating that students tended to be good at summarising content from seminars in essays and exams, but much less confident at articulating their own opinions in seminars. By writing regular reflections in their blog posts, students were able to engage more deeply with content and develop their thinking.
“Students don’t realise how smart they are.”
How does this approach reflect the strategic priorities of Integrated Assessment Design, Designed for All and Authentic Assessment?
Integrated Assessment Design
Students are familiar with the portfolio approach, having used it elsewhere on the programme. Distributing assessment and feedback across the unit makes these processes more manageable, and much less stressful, for both Florian and the cohort. It allows students to integrate their learning and make sense of disciplinary ways of knowing, acting and being, using formative feedback to improve, conceiving of it as an ongoing, developmental process which they and their peers are involved in, using a range of methods. Being more actively engaged in the process develops students’ agency and organisational skills, benefiting them in the final year of the programme.
Designed for All
The portfolio approach is inclusive because it enables students to demonstrate what they can do and provides multiple opportunities for them to achieve the learning outcomes for the unit. Being able to incorporate multimedia and non-academic writing into their blog posts, receiving guidance on reflective writing, and receiving timely, personalised feedback are further examples of how the approach is designed for all.
Authentic Assessment
“It’s difficult to make the point well in 600 words. Students need to be creative – there’s no space for waffle.”
Creating concise, reflective pieces of writing about music mirrors what students are expected to do in the discipline; this might be an abstract, proposal, or interview pitch. Students frequently report that they take pride in their work and find it motivating to share their writing with a wider audience.
