Members of the BILT and CEP team had the opportunity to attend the recent Advance HE Assessment and Feedback Symposium, entitled: ‘Shaping the Learning Experience: Innovations in Assessment & Feedback’.
This felt like a timely event to attend given the renewed focus within the University through the updated Assessment and Feedback strategy. The conference featured some of the insights from new HE evaluations as well as smaller-scale projects and reflections from different HE providers.
The morning keynote was delivered by Professor Kathleen M. Quinlan and Dr Edd Pitt and focussed on sharing their systematic review of assessment and feedback approaches and how this may influence further practices. Much of the academic literature has centred on ‘high-impact practices’, and Kuh and O’Donnell’s 2013 diagnostic of the features of highly effective learning practices was borne out in this opening address. Meaningful academic and peer interaction; timely and constructive feedback and reflection and integration of learning were some of the elements considered.
Following the identification of these elements from the research, there was an introduction of ‘Assessment and Feedback Superchargers’. Designed as a tool for reflection and curriculum development, these may be an interesting discussion prompt or resource as part of ongoing work in this area.
Across many of the subsequent presentations there was an appetite to explore notions of authenticity in assessment and how this linked to students’ (and teachers’) experiences of assessment.
In her presentation on ‘Student voice: what assessments do higher education students find most engaging?’, Professor Quinlan explored students’ perceptions of engagement with assessment forms ranging from written responses to group presentations and evaluated these through three key research questions: ‘Is authentic assessment associated with enjoyment? Does it support lower stress? How else do students explain why these assessments were particularly engaging?’.
Much of the discussion throughout the day involved reflection on assessment as part of a larger programme of design and the necessary supportive transitions and developmental opportunities needed to make these part of a larger context (or landscape?) of assessment.
It was also useful to hear from a different evidence base that where students find authentic assessments engaging, they can also be feel challenged in the moment. Some of the recent BILT blogs by Domi Duff explore different features and experiences of authentic assessment.
One particularly interesting tool being developed at Brunel University is around evaluating authentic assessments at a programme level and this had a number of resonances with the existing work within CEP/BILT around TESTA (Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment) as well as considering how assessment design is planned to enhance graduate skills. The Curriculum Enhancement Programme team at Bristol is working with a similar evaluation tool, so if you have an interest in this please get in touch.
Aspects of generative-AI came to the fore in the afternoon part of the conference, with some presentations exploring institutional approaches to online delivery and proctoring and other examples discussing the rationale behind their assessment and feedback designs.
Across all of these presentations there was a sense of academics and students carefully surveying the landscape and threading a path to creating a more positive, well-aligned experience of ‘assessment and feedback’, which is often sits more awkwardly and at a distance from ‘teaching and learning’.
Some of the trains were delayed on the way back; there were apparently some signalling problems. We wondered about the allegorical nature of this.
