ASSESSMENT AND FEEDBACK - 2023/4

Module Overview

Assessment and Feedback are some of the most hotly debated aspects of academic practice, and often the element of their educational experience with which students are least satisfied.  However, research indicates that whilst teaching and learning have increasingly become more student-centred in nature, assessment and feedback practices have been much slower to adapt.  The module will focus on developing participants’ understanding of key concepts of assessment and feedback, and the integration of scholarship and research with assessment and feedback practices. The module will introduce participants to self-evaluative inquiry-led approaches to investigating and reflecting critically on their practice.

Module provider

Surrey Institute of Education

Module Leader

WINSTONE Naomi (Sy Inst Educ)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 7

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 1

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

Not applicable.

Module content

Indicative content includes:

• Innovation in Assessment Design - including critiques and transformation of entrenched assessment and feedback practices that support academic integrity.


• Inclusivity in Assessment - including assessment standards / expectations and how to make them more explicit.


• Assessment and Feedback Literacy - including how understanding of assessment and feedback have developed, and how to support engagement with them.


• Feedback and the Affective Domain - including how emotions mediate the relationship between receiving feedback and performance.


• Hidden Feedback - including the role of internal feedback and feedback talk as rich sources informing feedback processes, and how these reflect authentic or signature disciplinary practices.

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

N/A

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate their achievement of the learning outcomes.  The module design is underpinned by the concept of constructive alignment to ensure that the learning and teaching strategies and assessment tasks align with the module learning outcomes.  The assessment strategy is based upon a patchwork assessment process (Winter, 2003), which is built upon the following priorities (Jones-Devitt et al., 2016: 4):

• Contextualized within the real world, personalized, student-centred and inclusive;


• Requiring continuous justification via synthesis and reflection;


• Supported by continuous formative feedback and peer engagement;


• Underpinned by bespoke learning significant to the students;


• Refection upon overall learning in relation to the broader context;


• Structured via continuous assessment that stimulates transformative and deep learning, and;


• Sustained through flexible, student-centred pedagogies.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

Two key elements:

1. A written reflection (up to 1500 words);


2. A viva (up to 30 minutes). 

The written reflection will require participants to critically reflect upon the learning and development of understanding, practice and skills in relation to the 5 patches.  This will allow participants the opportunity to stitch together the patches to form an overall experience that will be supported through the provision of a marking rubric collaboratively designed by the participants (see patch 2 activity).  The viva will take the form of a 30 minute professional conversation requiring participants to critically evaluate upon assessment and feedback practices appropriate to their disciplinary / professional context that draws upon relevant literature and identifies means of enhancing practice.  This will allow participants to critically reflect upon their overall experience of the module and on how self-, peer- and/or tutor-feedback have been drawn upon to inform the learning journey, and will be supported through the provision of a questioning framework provided to  participants prior to the viva.

The deadlines for the assessment associated with this module are as follows:

1. Formative patch 1 (week 2*)


2. Formative patch 2 (week 4*)


3. Formative patch 3 (week 6*)


4. Formative patch 4 (week 8*)


5. Formative patch 5 (week 10*)


6. Summative Written Reflection (week 11)


7. Summative Viva Deadline (week 13)

*Peer / tutor feedback (verbal / written / online) will be provided after each patch is submitted, where feasible.

The final summative assessment grade will be based upon both the written reflection (75%), and the viva (25%).  The development of these summative assessments will be informed by a mixture of self, peer, and/or tutor-feedback, as outlined above.

Formative assessment and feedback

Dialogic feedback will permeate the entire module both informally, through the feedback talk and self-feedback that each session will support (synchronous and asynchronous), and formally through the combination of tutor, peer and self-feedback that will be used to inform the final summative assessment tasks that serve to draw the patches together.  Each patch will support the development of different key skills, and will require participants to reflect upon their practice through a combination of the guided tasks (or patches), literature, and the multiple forms of feedback received.  This will be achieved through encouraging participants to share their findings by posting online and on which peers will be encouraged to reflect and comment.  Therefore, participants will be supported to provide peer feedback on other participants work, as well as to engage with the tutor and peer feedback that their work receives, and to reflect upon how this can inform their self-assessment.

References

Winter, R. (2003) Contexualizing the Patchwork Text: addressing problems of coursework assessment in higher education.  Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 40(2), 112-122

Jone-Devitt, S., Lawton, M., & Mayne, W. (2016) HEA Patchwork Assessment Practice Guide [online].  Available: HEA - report

Module aims

• Critically evaluate the role of assessment and feedback in the development of academic practice appropriate to the disciplinary / professional context.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

Enable participants to critically evaluate the role of assessment and feedback in higher education with regard to the development of academic practice appropriate to their disciplinary/professional context.  This will be achieved by introducing participants to the patchwork assessment process.  Essentially a patchwork assessment process involves a number of small-contained tasks (i.e. patches) that are stitched together to produce a self-reflective and justified summative account that draws upon self- and peer-feedback to inform the development of work.  Each patch will require the development of different skills, including self-evaluative inquiry-led approaches to investigating and reflecting critically on practice.

The learning and teaching methods include:

It is expected that this module will entail a total of at least 150 hours of study. This will include:

•         Formal online interaction (20 hours)


•         Guided study i.e. a patch (25 hours);


•         Independent study (105 hours). 

Formal online interaction will involve a combination of synchronous and asynchronous materials and interactions that will emphasize participatory and active learning drawing on participants’ work-based experience.  In addition, participants will engage in activities and reflective tasks between online interactions that will introduce them to self-evaluative inquiry-led approaches to investigating and reflecting critically on their assessment and feedback practices.

The synchronous and asynchronous materials and interactions will reflect the module content outlined above and there will be a guided study task for each topic, the results of which will be posted and discussed within an online forum:

Patch 1: Evaluate and suggest how to transform the assessment strategy of a programme / module to reflect a more innovative approach to assessment that supports academic integrity.

Patch 2: Co-design a marking rubric against the assessment criteria for the Assessment and Feedback module.

Patch 3: Embed a feedback literacy framework within a module / programme, or design an activity for students to develop their feedback literacy.

Patch 4: Analyze an emotive piece of feedback, its potential impact (i.e. Activity B3 from the DEFT), and a resultant action plan for how to address future emotive feedback.

Patch 5: Analyze a classroom transcript / recording of own teaching using the Feedback Talk Framework and reflect upon the relationship between feedback and teaching.

 

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: GCAM004

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2023/4 academic year.