Reflection prompts, tips for your own practice, introductory resources, plus relevant case studies. Reflection prompts The following are some reflection prompts, inspired by the University's Assessment and Feedback Principles and Priorities, to help you start thinking about designing assessment in your course:Will students have the opportunity to co-create any of the grade descriptors, be part of the assessment, or peer-assess?Are their opportunities for formative feedback?If an exam is proposed, could the course be assessed in another way?Programme-level assessment reflective prompts:Where do assessment deadlines sit in relation to other courses?Are the assessments across the whole programme appropriately scheduled?Are their opportunities for 'feedforward' from one course to another? Tips for practice Student assessment and feedback quick guide: A short introductory video, plus headlines from the University’s new assessment and feedback priorities and principles, with one example piece of guidance against each.Digital Assessment ToolsAssessment and Feedback (Learning technology): The Information Services website has practical information about online Assessment and Feedback tools to use within learning and teaching.Assignments: A wide range of online tools which support creating assignments through Learn, online submission, similarity checking (Turnitin), marking, and feedback.Tests and Quizzes: Tests using Learn, and Questionmark Perception - a specialised assessment system which can create assessments for web delivery.Peer Assessment: Turnitin PeerMark and WebPA.Digital Portfolios and Blogging: PebblePad and Academic Blogging Service.Media-based assessments: Collaborate Ultra and Media Hopper Create.Online Invigilation: Advice on online invigilation. Introductory resources Assessment DesignApproaches to assessment design: Some short general principles on assessment (re)design.Designing online assessment and exams: A series of webpages aimed to help you think about the best ways to assess students using online, remote methods.Assessment types and their pros and cons: Each assessment type has been summarised, and also listed with: What it’s good at, What it’s not so good at, Technical and ‘staff effort’ implications, ‘Cheatability’ and how to defend against it in the assessment itself, or by Overall assessment design strategy.Seven tips for enhancing assessment and feedback: A THE Campus blog post by Neil Lent, Tina Harrison and Sabine Rolle, which outlines seven steps towards enhancing assessment and feedback as a participatory, social process that supports deeper learning.Effective FeedbackWritten feedback, clear, constructive and to the point: A THE Campus blog post by James Derounian, who offers tips for giving compassionate feedback that will enable students to understand where their work went right and wrong.Whole class feedback: A THE Campus blog post by Paul Moss on whole-class feedback offers three advantages – it’s time saving, it encourages self-regulation and will help identify any weaknesses in the rubric.Artificial Intelligence and AssessmentArtificial intelligence and academic integrity: A THE Campus blog post by Georgina Chami, which looks at how universities can encourage the ethical and transparent use of artificial intelligence tools to support learning while guarding against misconduct.How ChatGPT can help disrupt assessment overload: A THE Campus blog post by Professor David Carless, which discusses he implications of generative AI for feedback and over-assessment. Case studies The three examples below are from the University of Edinburgh's Teaching Matters' Assessment and Feedback Revisited series:1.Student assessors in Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs): by Robbie Carnegie, Maggie Livingstone, Harrison Loader and Diana Stamatopoulos, year 4 and 5 Medical students.“Being an assessor was the first time we had seen any marking criteria, although likely differing from those used in summative assessment, the categories used to assess performances were ‘below expectation’, ‘meets expectation’ and ‘above expectation’. Whilst the first and second options were easy to distinguish between, we found ourselves rarely selecting ‘above expectation’ as we were unsure what the threshold of this would entail.”2. Experiences with introducing a feedback template to standardise feedback: by Dr Michael Daw, Director of Quality in the Deanery of Biomedical Sciences.“The template requires that just two comment boxes are completed by the marker. One box has the title, 'General comments about what was DONE WELL, and what COULD BE IMPROVED in future work', and the other states, 'Explain why the mark was awarded, referencing specific elements of the grade descriptors in the marking scheme'.”3. Co-creating a grade related criteria matrix with students: by Dr Deborah Holt, Lecturer in Mental Health Promotion and Health and Wellbeing at Moray House School of Education and Sport.“I asked [the students] to consider what each of the criteria might look like if done to a good level, (C), a higher level- very good (B), excellent (A) and finally a low pass (D)…Each group was then allocated a specific criterion and asked to have a go at drafting some wording for each grade descriptor for that criterion. The wording needed to be in language accessible to everyone in the group, and to help each other see how to go from a pass to the highest grades.” This article was published on 2024-11-08
