Closing keynote at SEDA Spring Conference in Edinburgh. Looks at change in Higher Education, TESTA data and principles from the 'Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment' Project (TESTA).

1. Changing the culture of
assessment and feedback
through TESTA
Tansy Jessop
@tansyjtweets @TESTAwin
13 May 2016

3. The TESTA Methodology
75 PROGRAMME
AUDITS
Programme
Team
Meeting

4. Sustained growth

5. TESTA….
“…is a way of thinking
about assessment and
feedback”
Graham Gibbs

6. TESTA shifts in perspective from…
• ‘my’ module to ‘our’ programme
• from teacher-focused on module delivery to
student experience of whole programme
• from individualistic modular design to coherent
team design
• from the NSS to enhancement strategies

7. TESTA addresses three problems
Problem 1: Knee-jerk problem
Problem 2: Curriculum design problem
Problem 3: Evidence to action problem

8. Problem 1: The knee-jerk

9. Wow! Our students
love History! Fantastic!

10. Whoops there’s a little
problem here

11. Fix it!
Ok, we’ll look especially at polishing
up our feedback. Students seems to
find that the least best thing.

12. Apply spit and polish

13. Anyone for the feedback sandwich?
I cushion the
blow!
The hard truths are nicely
disguised!
Me too - nice and
soft!

14. Problem 2: Curriculum design problem

15. Does IKEA 101 work for complex learning?

16. Curriculum privileges ‘knowing’ stuff
“Content is often the most visible aspect
for students, the control of which is
frequently devolved to individual
academics, who receive little or no training
in curriculum design and planning”
(Blackmore and Kandiko 2014, 7).

17. Blunt instrument curriculum

18. Problem 3: Evidence to action gap

19. Problem 3: Evidence to action gap
Three misguided assumptions:
1. Problem is a lack of high
quality data.
2. Analysis and findings a key
mechanism for change.
3. Academics’ intellectual
approach will facilitate
change.
http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/study-overview/

20. Proving is different from improving
“It is incredibly difficult to translate assessment
evidence into improvements in student learning”
“It’s far less risky and complicated to analyze data
than it is to act”
(Blaich & Wise, 2011)

21. Paradigm What it looks like
Technical rational Focus on data and tools
Relational Focus on people
Emancipatory Focus on systems and structures

22. TESTA themes and impacts
1. Variations in assessment patterns
2. High summative: low formative
3. Disconnected feedback
4. Lack of clarity about goals and standards

23. 1. Huge variations
• What is striking for
you about this data?
• How does it compare
with your context?
• Does variation
matter?

24. Characteristic Range
Summative 12 -227
Formative 0 - 116
Varieties of assessment 5 - 21
Proportion of examinations 0% - 87%
Time to return marks & feedback 10 - 42 days
Volume of oral feedback 37 -1800 minutes
Volume of written feedback 936 - 22,000 words

25. And some patterns…
Characteristic Low Medium High
Volume of summative
assessment
Below 33 40-48 More than 48
Volume of formative only Below 1 5-19 More than 19
% of tasks by examinations Below 11% 22-31% More than 31%
Variety of assessment
methods
Below 8 11-15 More than 15
Written feedback in words Less than 3,800 6,000-7,600 More than 7,600

26. Actions based on evidence
a) Reduction in summative
b) Increase in formative
c) Streamlined varieties
d) More or less feedback depending…
e) Quantifiable
f) Every time a coconut with each feature

27. Theme 2: High summative: low formative
• Summative ‘pedagogies of control’
• Circa 2 per module in UK
• Ratio of 1:8 of formative to summative
• Formative weakly understood and practised

28. What students say…
• A lot of people don’t do wider reading. You just focus
on your essay question.
• In Weeks 9 to 12 there is hardly anyone in our
lectures. I'd rather use those two hours of lectures to
get the assignment done.
• It’s been non-stop assignments, and I’m now free of
assignments until the exams – I’ve had to rush every
piece of work I’ve done.

29. What students say: the barriers
• If there weren’t loads of other assessments, I’d do
it.
• If there are no actual consequences of not doing it,
most students are going to sit in the bar.
• It’s good to know you’re being graded because you
take it more seriously.
• The lecturers do formative assessment but we
don’t get any feedback on it.

30. Assessment Arms Race

31. Actions based on evidence
1. Rebalance summative and formative
2. Shared language: programme approach
3. Formative in the public domain
4. Linking formative and summative
5. Risky, creative, challenging tasks
6. Students reading and producing more
7. Deeper understanding of value of formative

32. Theme 3: Disconnected feedback

33. Take five
• Choose a quote that
strikes you.
• What is the key issue?
• What strategies might
address this issue?

34. What students say…
The feedback is generally focused on the module.
It’s difficult because your assignments are so detached
from the next one you do for that subject. They don’t
relate to each other.
Because it’s at the end of the module, it doesn’t feed
into our future work.
I read it and think “Well, that’s fine but I’ve already
handed it in now and got the mark. It’s too late”.

35. Students say the feedback relationship is
broken…
Because they have to mark so many that our
essay becomes lost in the sea that they have to
mark.
It was like ‘Who’s Holly?’ It’s that relationship
where you’re just a student.
Here they say ‘Oh yes, I don’t know who you are.
Got too many to remember, don’t really care, I’ll
mark you on your assignment’.

36. Actions based on evidence
• Conversation: who starts the dialogue?
• Iterative cycles of reflection across modules
• Quick generic feedback: the ‘Sherlock’ factor
• Feedback synthesis tasks
• Technology: audio, screencast and blogging
• From feedback as ‘telling’…
• … to feedback as asking questions

37. Theme 4: Confusion about goals and
standards
• Consistently low scores on the AEQ for clear
goals and standards
• Alienation from the tools, especially criteria
and guidelines
• Symptoms: perceptions of marker variation,
unfair standards and inconsistencies in practice

38. What students say…
We’ve got two tutors- one marks completely differently
to the other and it’s pot luck which one you get.
They have different criteria, they build up their own
criteria.
It’s such a guessing game.... You don’t know what they
expect from you.

39. What students say…
There are criteria, but I find them really strange.
There’s “writing coherently, making sure the
argument that you present is backed up with
evidence”.
I get the impression that they don't even look at the
marking criteria. They read the essay and then they
get a general impression, then they pluck a mark
from the air.
I don’t have any idea of why it got that mark

40. Caught in a paradigm war…
Scientific Paradigm Naturalistic paradigm
Neutrality Interpretation
Written and traceable Free, ephemeral, incidental, gaps
Convergent Divergent
Standardised Varied
Final word Dialogic, provisional
Accountability and evidence Social practice

41. Taking action: internalising goals and
standards
• Regular calibration exercises
• Discussion and dialogue
• Discipline specific criteria (no cut and paste)
Staff Team
• Rewrite/co-create criteria
• Marking exercises (ASKE CETL)
• Design and value formative
Staff and
students
• Enter secret garden - peer review
• Engage in drafting processes
• Self-reflection
Students

42. It’s about educational paradigms…

43. Transmission Model

44. Social Constructivist Model

45. Impacts at Winchester
• Upwards trajectory on A&F scores on NSS on
TESTA programmes – ‘Top 4’ University
• TESTA ‘effect’ - people talk about formative
• Experimentation in co-creation
• Team approach to designing curricula
• Design cycle for periodic review includes TESTA

46. References
Blaich, C., & Wise, K. (2011). From Gathering to Using Assessment Results: Lessons from the Wabash
National Study. Occasional Paper #8. University of Illinois: National Institution for Learning Outcomes
Assessment.
Boud, D. and Molloy, E. (2013) ‘Rethinking models of feedback for learning: The challenge of
design’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(6), pp. 698–712. doi:
10.1080/02602938.2012.691462.
Gibbs, G. & Simpson, C. (2004) Conditions r which assessment supports students' learning. Learning and
Teaching in Higher Education. 1(1): 3-31.
Harland, T., McLean, A., Wass, R., Miller, E. and Sim, K. N. (2014) ‘An assessment arms race and its
fallout: High-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher
Education, 40(4), pp. 528–541. doi: 10.1080/02602938.2014.931927.
Hughes, G. (2014) Ipsative Assessment. Basingstoke. Palgrave MacMillan.
Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. (2014). The Influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student
learning: a comparative study. Studies in Higher Education. Published Online 27 August 2014
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2014.943170
Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. (2014) The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale
study of students’ learning in response to different assessment patterns. Assessment and Evaluation in
Higher Education. 39(1) 73-88.
Nicol, D. (2010) From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher
education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35: 5, 501 – 517.
O'Donovan, B , Price, M. and Rust, C. (2008) 'Developing student understanding of assessment
standards: a nested hierarchy of approaches', Teaching in Higher Education, 13: 2, 205 — 217
Sadler, D. R. (1989) ‘Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems’, Instructional
Science, 18(2), pp. 119–144. doi: 10.1007/bf00117714.