Education Day: Rethinking Assessment

Education Day: Rethinking Assessment

Assessment and feedback practices are considered ‘amongst the most powerful levers educators have for improving student learning’ yet positive student experiences of assessment can often be hard to achieve. How can we address this challenge? What works? Where do we need to think differently?

To help us with these questions, we have invited the authors of Advance HE’s recent literature review on the impact of assessment and feedback policy and practice on students in higher education. Professor Kathleen Quinlan and Dr Edd Pitt from the University of Kent analysed over 3000 peer-reviewed articles published internationally between 2016 and 2021. During the day we will be drawing on their conclusions and recommendations to facilitate reflection and discussion of how assessment works in the St George’s context. 

Programme of the day

Programme details

Opening keynote

Translating the latest assessment and feedback research literature into practice

Professor Kathleen Quinlan and Dr Edd Pitt, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Kent In 2022, we researched and wrote the review, Impacts of higher education assessment and feedback policy and practice on students: A review of the literature 2016-2021, synthesising 481 empirical studies from 71 different countries. Through it, we identified evidence-based assessment and feedback policies or practices that have had a demonstrable impact on key student outcomes. Eight key principles underlying effective practices emerged. In this talk, we will explain these key principles and illustrate how they can “supercharge” students’ learning when embedded into assessment and feedback practice. Based on this our principles-based analysis, we designed the A&F Superchargers resource being launched this autumn by Advance HE, which we’ll use in the workshop later in the day.

Morning workshops (11.45-13.00)

Teaching and (Machine) Learning: World Café on Assessment, AI and Feedback

Dr Luke Woodham and Dr Baba Sheba (CTiE)

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) promises to be a watershed moment in higher education. It offers significant promise for new ways of working through developing innovative technology-supported learning journeys and feedback, while also managing ever more complex workloads. However, it simultaneously poses existential challenges for many existing methods of assessment, raising numerous questions around how to maintain academic integrity and the critical reading and citation of sources.

In this world café session participants will be asked to reflect on the current and expected impact of AI on their own discipline and teaching practice, and to share ideas in response to a series of provocations. These ideas will be shared back with the larger group, and used to consider how St George’s can work with and use AI to further build towards their strategic goals; namely reimagining an inclusive and interactive curriculum (E1.1) that provides opportunities for authentic assessment and feedback for students (E1.3).

Dialogues Around Assessment: Using Discussions on Assessment Rubrics and Exemplars to Increase Marking Consistency and Student Satisfaction

Olga Rodriquez Falcon, Salman Usman (CIDE) and Jennifer Stott (Clinical Pharmacology)

Improving Assessment and Feedback practices is an area of priority for St George's University. Low NSS scores in this area indicate the prevalence of levels of dissatisfaction among many students regarding the clarity of assessment criteria and of expectations. Current educational literature (see, for example, Tao, Panadero and Carless, 2022) highlights the use of clear rubrics and exemplars as examples of good practice to increase students' assessment literacy and satisfaction, as well as reducing degree awarding gaps for students from minoritized ethnic groups (QAA, 2023). In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to learn and reflect on how dialogic interactions on rubrics and exemplars between teachers and students and among educators themselves can be used to improve the overall experience of both students and teachers.

Afternoon sessions (14.15 -15.05)

The Power of Feedback

Dr Elizabeth Staddon (CIDE)

Back in 2007, Hattie and Timperley wrote an article entitled ‘The Power of Feedback’ in which they make key claims about feedback for learning and achievement based on an extensive review of evidence. Their article has been very influential and is still widely cited in contemporary scholarship on effective feedback in higher education. This session will be dedicated to revisiting Hattie and Timperley’s key messages as a way of ‘rethinking’ feedback practices for today. Starting with the claim that feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning, and that feedback can be more or less impactful, we will unpick what both teachers and students should be doing to make feedback most effective.

Meaningful tasks? Designing fit-for-purpose assessments

Dr Kate Everett-Korn (Genomic Medicine), Jason Tan and Dr Saranne Weller (CIDE)

The practical issues associated with the Covid-19 lockdowns dramatically challenged the role that in-person timed examinations play in our curriculum. More recently developments in generative Artificial Intelligence have also put at risk the essay-based and open-book assessment modes that often replaced the examination. This experience of innovative thinking about how and why we assess has opened the debate about how learning outcomes in content-heavy subjects might be meaningfully and authentically assessed in different ways.

In this session we will ask you to contribute to a current Student-Staff Partnership Grants for the genomic medicine curriculum. You will explore alternative assessments that you may want to consider in your own practice, considering how these might be reliable, valid and inclusive.

Unpacking the marking and feedback process for students

Sally Mitchell (CIDE), Kajal Patel (Registry, Exams), Jonathon Fee (Education Operations)

Students generally expect that following completion of their work (an in course-assignment, written exam or practical assessment) they will receive timely feedback and marks. In practice ‘timely’ is often defined by the university policy on expected turnaround times for the release of marks. Such norms generally factor in the processes that need to occur before marks can be released; but students are often unaware of what these processes are and why they need to happen.

Drawing on participants’ knowledge and expertise we’ll aim to bring to the surface the staff-side assessment and feedback processes that follow students’ completion of assessment, recognising that these might be different for different types of assessed work. We’ll work in groups to draft student-facing posters that communicate the various processes and their purpose.

This work will contribute to current work to develop a clear and accessible Code of Practice for Assessment and Feedback at St George’s. (The activity is based on Pitt and Quinlan’s Feedback Supercharger no 5)

Re-imagining Audiences for Assignments

Catherine Roberts (Biomedical Science), Rosie Hallett (Occupational Therapy), Diib Abdi (CIDE) and David Ross (CIDE)

Pitt and Quinlan (2022) highlight that “students value and benefit from seeing how what they are learning connects to the real world.” In this session, we will draw on their work to consider how assessment tasks might be framed and published as outputs for different audiences and purposes to promote student learning and engagement. Catherine Roberts and Rosie Hallett will share examples of assessments tailored to a range of “real world” audiences. Examples include grant applications, peer-reviewed research papers, public-facing posters and professional journal articles. David Ross will signpost how you might wish to publish student work focused on inclusivity via the Inclusive Education Blog, whilst Diib Abdi will share her experiences of writing blog posts during her current placement within the Centre for Innovation and Development of Education.

Closing plenary workshop (15.30 -17.00)

Supercharging Your Own Assessment and Feedback Practice

Professor Kathleen Quinlan and Dr Edd Pitt, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Kent

In this interactive workshop, we’ll discuss potential actions you and your programme can take to enhance NSS scores on assessment and feedback. Through a game-like discussion, participants will explore a subset of the eight “superchargers” principles: high expectations, feedback, meaningful interactions and reflection and integration. For each principle, you’ll consider multiple practical, concrete examples of how it can be applied in or adapted to your context. The aim is for each individual participant to identify one specific way they could enhance their own practice and one idea to share with their programme team for potential application more widely across their programme.

In 2022, we researched and wrote the review, Impacts of higher education assessment and feedback policy and practice on students: A review of the literature 2016-2021, synthesising 481 empirical studies from 71 different countries. Through it, we identified evidence-based assessment and feedback policies or practices that have had a demonstrable impact on key student outcomes. Eight key principles underlying effective practices emerged. In this talk, we will explain these key principles and illustrate how they can “supercharge” students’ learning when embedded into assessment and feedback practice. Based on this our principles-based analysis, we designed the A&F Superchargers resource being launched this autumn by Advance HE, which we’ll use in the workshop later in the day.

- Dr Edd Pitt and Professor Kathleen M Quinlan -

Workshop: Supercharging your own assessment and feedback practice

In this interactive workshop, we’ll discuss potential actions you and your programme can take to enhance NSS scores on assessment and feedback. Through a game-like discussion, participants will explore a subset of the eight “superchargers” principles: high expectations, feedback, meaningful interactions and reflection and integration. For each principle, you’ll consider multiple practical, concrete examples of how it can be applied in or adapted to your context. The aim is for each individual participant to identify one specific way they could enhance their own practice and one idea to share with their programme team for potential application more widely across their programme.

- Dr Edd Pitt and Professor Kathleen M Quinlan -

About our speakers

Dr Edd Pitt

Edd is the Programme Director for the Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education and Reader in Higher Education and Academic Practice in the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Kent, UK. Edd is also an Honorary Associate Professor at The Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.

Edd has recently been collaborating with academics in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and Hong Kong. His principal research field is assessment and feedback with a particular focus upon students’ use of feedback. His current research agenda explores signature feedback practices and the development of both teacher and student feedback literacy. His most recent publication was a systematic literature review of assessment and feedback articles between 2016 - 2021 commissioned by Advance HE.

Professor Kathleen M Quinlan, PhD PFHEA

Kathleen is Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Kent, UK. She has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, 10 book chapters, and two books, including How Higher Education Feels: Commentaries on Poems that Illuminate Emotion in Learning and Teaching (Sense, 2016). Her research is broadly in the areas of learning, teaching, assessment, and student engagement in higher education. She specialises in research on students’ holistic development, including the ways in which curriculum and instruction can support students’ interest.

In 2023, she was awarded a Society for Research into Higher Education Accolade for Contribution to the Field and was short-listed for the Jonathan Nichols Memorial Essay Prize for an essay on programmatic assessment. She has been principal investigator on grants from the Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes, NERUPI, the Royal Academy of Engineering HE STEM Programme, and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, as well as co-investigator on projects funded by Advance HE and the Higher Education Careers Services Unit.