Learning and Teaching Enhancement Office

Good Practice Discussions

Formative Assessment and Feedback (2011)

In February 2011, University Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee agreed a theme for departmental good practice discussions in support of the enhancement of learning and teaching as ‘Formative Assessment and Feedback’. At its meeting in July 2011, University Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee considered reports from Faculties, School, the Division, Students' Union, Directors of Studies (Taught programmes) Forum and presentations from the annual Innovation in Learning and Teaching event. For the purposes of the Good Practice Discussion, the guidance memorandum defined formative assessment as: Assessment that has a developmental purpose, designed to help learners learn more effectively by giving them feedback on their performance and on how it can be improved and / or maintained. Departments were asked to note that the focus of discussions should be on formative assessment and feedback within units (i.e. to support a student’s development before the final element of assessment in a unit). As a minimum, participating committees / forums were requested to consider and report on the following: Examples of formative assessment and feedback (on assessment) currently used

within a unit; What is effective and why; What might be improved.

A key theme in the many of the reports was the need to further enhance the engagement of students in formative assessment, when the activity was optional. The reports identify many examples of good practice formative assessment and feedback across the institution. Reports were also asked to identified what is effective and why and what might be improved. Some examples are highlighted below: In class quizzes Chemical Engineering: Generally, the view was that students were more

engaged with this type of formative assessment, than others such as problem sheets and presentations.

Computer Science: Use of audience response system clickers. Subsequently undergraduate students asked to develop four new MCQs for use in future session using the audience response system clicker system.

Physics: “Clickers” and digital optical pens are used by some staff to enable lectures and problems classes to be more interactive, and to provide students with instantaneous feedback on formative assessment tasks set within these sessions.

Problem Classes Chemical Engineering: Problem classes were seen to be very effective and as a

result wider implementation of problem classes was to be introduced across all years to help students with learning and feedback. In some cases, these will be formative assessments, and in others these will be in class workshops.

Mechanical Engineering: Problem and Feedback Classes that accompany the lectures for each unit. These classes allow students to work through problems linked to their lectures and to ask for feedback on their work.

Physics: All lectured units have associated problems classes (each student attends about four hours of problems classes per 6-credit lectured unit), in which the lecturer and a postgraduate demonstrator answer individual students’ queries and provide general feedback on students’ understanding of the material.

Peer Assessment / Review Academic Council: Student Academic representatives from the Faculty of

Humanities and Social Sciences reported that the use of peer review of assessments has proved to be useful.

Architecture and Civil Engineering: Peer review of conference papers in AR10370: Structures 1B (s2).

Architecture and Civil Engineering: Year Six MArch students’ involvement in the crit assessment process, thereby helping them with their learning, is viewed by the students themselves as a very important part of their studies.

Architecture and Civil Engineering: Midway through their research project (Architecture Part II MArch) students deliver a PowerPoint presentation to both fellow students and staff, with peer led questioning and feedback discussion.

Chemistry: First year undergraduates: Key skills sessions on making posters and presentations, presented during a whole afternoon. Students mark each others posters using comments on post-it notes. The aim is for students to leave constructive feedback for their fellow students. Peer assessment throughout to give them a wider set of assessment criteria. Show examples of good and bad questions answers.

DfLL: Peer review of research proposals on the BA (Hons) Early Years, Care and Education at City of Bristol College.

Education: Annual poster session that provides formative feedback for final year Undergraduate students on their Dissertation projects (ED30428 & ED30429) on the BA Coach Education and Sports Development Unit. Normally, the event takes place in week nine of semester one, late enough for students to present the stage at which they are at and early enough for students to receive feedback that can help them undertake and write their final year dissertations.

Health: First year undergraduates: Peer marking conducted twice on lab reports. First time student find it hard to do, but second time see more in it and have greater confidence to take their peer’s comments more seriously – helps to remove the ‘mystique’ of marking criteria.

Psychology: Postgraduate taught students put together an intervention design in small groups. Use props and PowerPoint to present to the group but assessed by staff. Hand in materials too. Each group gets to see what others are doing.

Design Review Process Architecture and Civil Engineering: The design review process is effective as it

allows for problem-based learning. This is undoubtedly the most profoundly-important teaching approach which the Department uses throughout its programmes.

Mid Semester Tests Health: A number of the units on the undergraduate programme hold mid

semester tests to provide feedback on students’ progress during the semester. Some of these tests are purely formative, whilst others contribute a small percentage to the summative assessment of the unit. The tests are marked and gone through in a subsequent lecture. This gives students the opportunity to experience exam style questions before the large bulk of the summative assessment and receive feedback on their performance both in terms of the marks they receive and guidance on how best to answer the questions. Student feedback on mid semester tests is generally very positive, but the amount of effort that they put into the formative assessment tends to be related to whether it contributes to their unit mark or not. They undoubtedly form a more realistic assessment of a students’ ability if the test contributes to the summative assessment in some way.

Prompt turnaround time for feedback Chemistry: For CH10011 (First year organic lab), turning round the marking of

80ish scripts in 48h so that the students could receive feedback on lab report #1 before the hand-in deadline for lab report #2, etc., etc. The aim of this was to allow the students to develop and improve their marks as the lab course progressed, allowing them a clearer picture what constituted a good lab report. Specifically, it seemed quite helpful in underscoring to students the importance of good referencing, comprehensive description of procedures undertaken, the importance of good observational skills, etc.

Management: MN50175 Operations Management uses a textbook-related IT facility, called myOMlab to set weekly topic tests. These consist of a mixture of qualitative MCQ's and algorithmically generated quants questions relating to the week's lecture. The lecturer can track progress of each student and in relation to different topics. This allows the lecturer to tailor their revision session on area where students struggled. The feedback from this year's OM has been very positive on the myOMlab, especially as in the exam one section is MCQ's which are similar to the practice tests.”

Revision sessions / Mock examinations Academic Council: Some student academic representatives commented on the

positive use of mock examinations in Physics, and Pharmacy and Pharmacology. Biology and Biochemistry: First year undergraduates: Revision sessions at the

end of the semester where students are encouraged to bring answers to previous exam papers along, and deliver a short two minute presentation. Use of MCQs with audience response system clickers follows. Students stand up as a group to present answers to questions.

Health: The Sport & Exercise Medicine programme runs a Revision Day to help prepare students for their Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE). During this they are asked to perform similar tasks to those they will be examined on during the OSCE and receive feedback from tutors who are also examiners for the OSCE. This is a time consuming process for the students and the tutors but provides invaluable experience in the exam style and feedback on the students’ clinical skills six weeks before the actual exam.

Management: The MSc Marketing includes mock examinations in the first semester, the results of which are then discussed in class and also used to provide individual written feedback. The subject group regard this activity as helpful in supporting students, many of whom arrive unfamiliar with UK academic conventions.

Other Architecture and Civil Engineering: Civil Engineering first year

undergraduates: Task to build a water-holding tower in small groups. All groups participate at each stage rotating the project to another group to complete the following stage. First group of students design a tower on paper from knowledge gained during the first semester; then given to a second group of students to check calculations; and a third group then have to build the tower. The fourth group tests the tower. All towers tend to fail due to buckling, and this is somewhat planned as the reason for the failure feeds into next taught lecture.

Education: The MA in Education ULL unit. The tutor asks students three questions at the end of each session (or DL section) using the Moodle 'Learning Journal' activity: i] What did you learn this session? ii] How might it influence your practice? iii] What further learning would you like to do? The tutor has found it invaluable to read across these 'reflections' and identify what students are learning (and not learning) in sessions and add individual replies and further feedback/ dialogue where time permits. The tutor has been able to follow up issues and areas of difficulty in later sessions. It has also been a useful tool to support students in identifying and pursuing areas of interest for their assignments. In the tutor’s experience, students respond well to this opportunity. Tutors supervising students taking this unit by distance learning could be encouraged/enabled to adopt this practice.

Electronic and Electrical Engineering: Student agreed that quick feedback was good and the students said they would prefer some generic feedback if this was received faster. The students felt clarity of feedback was important and that clear comments were more valuable.

Electronic and Electrical Engineering: On-line discussion forums – the students liked the fact that they were awarded a small proportion of marks for the quality of

their participation in the forum for EE40098 Computational Intelligence, and thought it would be good to extend this.

Mechanical Engineering: Use a ‘Dragons Den’ format with external industrialists to introduce a competitive element of formative assessment and feedback.

In addition to the Good Practice recorded above, academic departments and the Students’ Union have also identified various issues for consideration:

o Academic Council: Some student academic representatives reported that had been little or no use of formative assessment within their academic department since the first semester of their first year.

If you have any comments or queries about the Good Practice Discussions on ‘Formative Assessment and Feedback’ or wish to obtain more in-depth information about the examples from elsewhere in the University, then please contact a member of the Student Learning Experience and Quality Team.