Tansy Jessop

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale study of students’ learning in response to different programme assessment patterns

Audits of 23 degree programmes in eight universities showed wide variations in assessment patterns and feedback. Scores from Assessment Experience Questionnaire returns revealed consistent relationships between characteristics of assessment and student learning responses, including a strong relationship between quantity and quality of feedback and a clear sense of goals and standards, and between both these scales and students’ overall satisfaction. Focus group data helped to explain students’ learning responses but also identified ambivalent responses to the use of formative-only assessment, particularly when it was optional. Frequently, students were unclear about goals and standards, and found feedback unhelpful when assessment demands differed across modules, and when marking standards and approaches varied widely, making it difficult for feedback to feed forwards. The methodology underpinning the Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment study described here has been used in more than 20 universities worldwide and is helping teachers to redesign assessment regimes, so that teachers’ efforts support learning better.

Space frontiers for new pedagogies: a tale of constraints and possibilities

This article draws together two linked studies on formal teaching spaces within one university. The first consisted of a multi‐method analysis, including observations of four teaching events, interviews with academics and estates staff, analysis of architectural plans, and a talking campus tour. The second study surveyed 166 students about their perceptions of existing teaching spaces and dreams of ideal spaces, eliciting qualitative comments. Researchers used a comparative analysis of the data to generate themes. Academics and students held differing conceptions of space. For students, a functional view prevailed with teacher‐centred and dominant approaches (lectures, seminars, tutorials) constraining their imagination of fresh possibilities. Academics reflected on the limits and potential of spaces, surfacing more abstract concepts about familiarity, invisibility, space–time dimensions, territoriality and collegiality. The article explores the boundaries that space may place over imagined and alternative pedagogies, and concludes that familiar, computer‐networked and conventional spaces may re‐inscribe hierarchical, teacher‐centred approaches.

Mind the Gap: An Analysis of How Quality Assurance Processes Influence Programme Assessment Patterns.

This article explores the relationship between the lack of visible attention to formative assessment in degree specifications and its marginalization in practice. Degree specification documents form part of the quality apparatus emphasizing the accountability and certification duties of assessment. Ironically, a framework designed to assure quality may work to the exclusion of a pedagogic duty to students. This study draws on interview and documentary evidence from 14 programmes at a single UK university, supported by data from a national research project. The authors found that institutional quality frameworks focused programme leaders’ attention on summative assessment, usually atomized to the modular unit. The invisibility of formative assessment in documentation reinforced the tendency of modular programmes to have high summative demands, with optional, fragmented and infrequent formative assessment. Heavy workloads, modularity and pedagogic uncertainties compounded the problem. The article concludes with reflections about facilitating a more pervasive culture of formative assessment to improve student learning.

Towards a Language of Possibility: critical reflection and mentorship in initial teacher education

Abstract This paper examines a programme which aimed at creating alternative school‐based experiences for postgraduate students following a 1‐year higher diploma of education course at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. The programme was premised on the belief that critical reflection is necessary for educational transformation, and that teacher educators increasingly will be expected to raise the quality of teaching in schools. The background to the Mentor Programme is described and the underlying rationale is discussed. Whilst the evidence from the study reflects mentor satisfaction at the quality and range of teaching skills developed by students during the programme, the investigators express disappointment at their lack of success in attaining critical reflection by their students. Students generally did not look critically, as they had been encouraged to do, at the institutional or societal context of their teaching. The discussion identifies three possible reasons for this, but concludes ...

Equivocal Tales about Identity, Racism and the Curriculum.

This paper is based on a small-scale study of the minority ethnic student experience at a small mainly ‘white’ university in the south of England. Students described their experience as broadly positive but suggested clashes of values in some areas of campus social life. Where the curriculum explored notions of culture, students valued the space to reflect on and nurture their identity, but most described the curriculum as patchily diverse. Students were ambiguous about racism, giving anecdotal evidence of its existence whilst downplaying its significance. The findings suggest that the Higher Education (HE) curriculum is a powerful but under-utilised tool in developing a more inclusive experience for all students. They further suggest that legal and institutional procedures are not a strong enough framework to combat racism, and that campuses with few minority ethnic students need to take a much more intentional approach to transforming the institutional culture.

The creation of virtual communities in a primary initial teacher training programme

This paper discusses some of the conditions that have facilitated the use of a customised virtual learning environment as part of a blended learning approach on a part‐time postgraduate initial teacher training programme for prospective primary school teachers. It is based on data gathered as part of a study of the impact of e‐learning on students following a part‐time flexible postgraduate route to Qualified Teacher Status. It concludes that the success of these particular virtual communities can be attributed to the balance, on the programme, between face‐to‐face and e‐learning together with the nature and structuring of the e‐learning tasks; the focus on professional learning with the immediacy of its application in the work‐place; its focus on independent and student‐led interaction; and the motivation and personal circumstances of the students involved.

The implications of programme assessment patterns for student learning

Abstract Evidence from 73 programmes in 14 U.K universities sheds light on the typical student experience of assessment over a three-year undergraduate degree. A previous small-scale study in three universities characterised programme assessment environments using a similar method. The current study analyses data about assessment patterns using descriptive statistical methods, drawing on a large sample in a wider range of universities than the original study. Findings demonstrate a wide range of practice across programmes: from 12 summative assessments on one programme to 227 on another; from 87% by examination to none on others. While variations cast doubt on the comparability of U.K degrees, programme assessment patterns are complex. Further analysis distinguishes common assessment patterns across the sample. Typically, students encounter eight times as much summative as formative assessment, a dozen different types of assessment, more than three quarters by coursework. The presence of high summative and low formative assessment diets is likely to compound students’ grade-orientation, reinforcing narrow and instrumental approaches to learning. High varieties of assessment are probable contributors to student confusion about goals and standards. Making systematic headway to improve student learning from assessment requires a programmatic and evidence-led approach to design, characterised by dialogue and social practice.

Formative assessment: missing in action in both research-intensive and teaching-focused universities?

Abstract In this study, we analysed survey data from 386 third year undergraduate students on 14 programmes within three UK universities. The universities are characterised as teaching-focused or research-intensive: a ‘plate-glass’ and ‘red-brick’ research-intensive; and a ‘new’ teaching-intensive university. We used the Assessment Experience Questionnaire Version 4.0 (AEQ 4.0), designed to understand students’ perceptions of programme assessment environments. The AEQ contains scales constructed from theories about assessment, feedback and deep learning. We performed exploratory factor analysis on AEQ 4.0 and identified five salient domains: how students learn; quality of feedback; internalisation of standards; student effort; and formative assessment. These domains were compared across the three universities. Formative assessment was the weakest domain in all three university assessment environments, followed closely by students’ internalising standards. Students at the new teaching-focused university had significantly higher scores on scales about deep learning, student effort and the quality of feedback than students in the two research-intensives. Findings show that theories about the virtue of formative assessment have yet to play out in practice; and that the teaching-focused university seemed to be encouraging deeper approaches to learning through its feedback and assessment tasks.

Struggling and juggling: a comparison of student assessment loads across research and teaching-intensive universities

Abstract In spite of the rising tide of metrics in UK higher education, there has been scant attention paid to assessment loads, when evidence demonstrates that heavy demands lead to surface learning. Our study seeks to redress the situation by defining assessment loads and comparing them across research and teaching intensive universities. We clarify the concept of ‘assessment load’ in response to findings about high volumes of summative assessment on modular degrees. We define assessment load across whole undergraduate degrees, according to four measures: the volume of summative assessment; volume of formative assessment; proportion of examinations to coursework; number of different varieties of assessment. All four factors contribute to the weight of an assessment load, and influence students’ approaches to learning. Our research compares programme assessment data from 73 programmes in 14 UK universities, across two institutional categories. Research-intensives have higher summative assessment loads and a greater proportion of examinations; teaching-intensives have higher varieties of assessment. Formative assessment does not differ significantly across both university groups. These findings pose particular challenges for students in different parts of the sector. Our study questions the wisdom that ‘more’ is always better, proposing that lighter assessment loads may make room for ‘slow’ and deep learning.

Inspiring transformation through TESTA’s programme approach

This chapter explores evidence from 75 undergraduate degree programmes at 14 UK universities about students’ experience of assessment and feedback. The data was collected through the Transforming the Experience of Students Through Assessment (TESTA) project. TESTA illuminates students’ whole programme experience of assessment and feedback within the context of modular curriculum design. The methodology consists of an audit to ascertain dimensions of the assessment environment and focus groups with students. Analysis explores the relationship between assessment design and students’ lived experience. Findings show the prevalence of high summative and low formative assessment diets and disconnected feedback which students find difficult to use. High summative diets reinforce students’ instrumental approach to learning. A lack of formative assessment impacts on engagement in learning, diminishing opportunities for risk-taking, creativity and wider reading. Findings from TESTA have prompted educationally principled strategies: rebalancing the number of summative and formative tasks with greater connections between them, devising formative assessment tasks valued by both students and staff and designing feedback to feedforward. Wider implications include establishing institutional mechanisms to ensure principled, evidence-based and programme-focused assessment and feedback design within existing curriculum processes.