Assessment & Feeback

This event shared the changes made to the assessment and feedback mechanisms on placement as part of a pilot project within the School of Business, MTU Cork ...

"BALI - Building Assessment Literacy Initiative - is a project to develop a suite of resources to support students and staff in the growth of competencies and capabilities in Assessment Literacy (AL). It aims to bring an interdisciplinary approach to the co-creation of these resources, with student-staff partnership at its core. In this session, participants heard about the most recent outcomes of the BALI project, where 3 teams comprised of a mix of staff and students co-created assessment and feedback resources in a partnership-based approach. We got a peek under the bonnet of the partnership-based approach hearing from both the staff and student’s perspective."

Assessment is probably the most important thing we can do to engage students in their learning. However, not all forms of assessment are created equal! Whilst there are many benefits of using authentic assessment approaches and providing feedback, teaching staff can face challenges in terms of large class sizes and their own constraints around resourcing and time. This session was an interactive workshop for staff which focused on redesigning assessments to make them a more authentic experience for students whilst ensuring they are manageable from a staff perspective. Participants were invited to send any assignment briefs, or past exam questions that they would like help with redesigning so that they are more authentic, prior to the session. A selection of these were then used as “live” cases at the session. Contact bali@cit.ie for more information.

Providing learners with feedback is known to be one of the most impactful things we can do to enhance learning, it can also be very time-consuming. Often it also seems that learners are not acting on that feedback. This session will explore issues with feedback, and ways in which learners can be provided with feedback that are both efficient and effective for us. We will discuss the ‘power of words’ and explore the value of commenting constructively on assignments and assessments.

Instructors often state that they provide lots of feedback but to little effect. This session will explore some of the reasons why this may happen and outline options for engaging students with assessment and feedback. In particular, providing choice, opportunities to apply feedback and cultivating trust are all known to encourage students to engage with the assessment processes.

Quality feedback (i) recognises what is good (ii) identifies limitations and (iii) suggests how the work could be improved. Shifting feedback responsibility from instructors to learners. Self-assessment & peer-assessment

While presenting learners with the assessment criteria and standards is good practice - they don’t necessarily result in learners developing a good understanding of the criteria and standard. This session explores the importance of dialogue around assessment and how a shared understanding of assessment requirements can be developed by applying rubrics to exemplars.

If our learners are to become more independent and develop the capacity to assess their own learning they must know what the assessment criteria and standards are. This session presented different types of assessment rubrics. Examples of different rubrics or marking sheets were presented so that these can be critiqued, and good practice identified.

Reflective practice is a key skill in many professions including education. but is particularly relevant to students in the context of work placement. We as ...

This seminar focused on developing feedback literacy in both staff and students and redesigning assessment to build on this new-found understanding. It drew on student and staff expertise across two main strands. Strand 1 took a ‘deep dive’ to explore what learner-focused feedback means and how staff and students can enable impacts from different feedback approaches. Particular emphasis was placed on feedback literacy: the capacities of teachers and students to make the most of feedback opportunities. What capabilities do teachers and students need in order to take up their complementary roles in feedback processes? Strand 2 looked at disentangling assessment and feedback and explored the various forms of feedback used in assessment and in the absence of assessment. Assessment design was highlighted so that opportunities to provide feedback to inform future work are intentionally embedded at the development phase.

"This seminar explored concerns around academic integrity in Higher Education and how assessment redesign can eliminate many of these concerns. The seminar was divided into two elements. The first session explored why, how and when students cheat in Higher Education. It opened up discussion and debate on academic integrity, plagiarism, collusion and contract cheating and the role we play in it as educators. The second part of the seminar focused on re-thinking how we assess and redesigning assessment approaches. The presenter discussed strategies that include encouraging students to see assessment, both, as an opportunity to learn and an opportunity to demonstrate their excellence and skills. Redesigning and rethinking the tasks we ask our students to complete in order to demonstrate attainment of the desired life-long skills in tandem with module and programme learning outcomes can effectively eliminate both the desire and the opportunity to ‘cheat’. Across the two sessions participants were asked to self-reflect, to consider their values and establish why they assess as they do. Traditions and assumptions were challenged & participants were supported in the redesigning of assessment approaches."

While we as educators might hate to admit it, assessment does drive student learning and is probably the one most important thing we can do to help our students learn. Formative assessment can help us as educators identify concepts that students are struggling to understand, skills they are having difficulty acquiring, or learning standards they have not yet achieved so that we can make adjustments to lessons, instructional techniques, and academic support. If we wish to use assessment as a tool to enhance student learning the provision of formative feedback is crucial. We need to help students understand not only where they have gone wrong, but also what they need to do to improve and when they have done well, we need to help them understand what is good about their work and how they can build on it and develop further. This seminar focussed on how the Department of Mathematics and the Academic Learning Centre use Numbas, a free online platform aimed at numerate disciplines, to provide students with the opportunity to practice particular types of mathematical problems, receive instant feedback and advice on where they may have gone wrong, and to attempt other similar auto-generated questions. This seminar was aimed at academic staff who teach in a numerate discipline who would like to explore how they too can provide formative assessment opportunities to their students in an efficient and effective manner. Those who attended this session: Got an overview of some of the capabilities of Numbas Learned how Numbas can be used to enhance student learning Learned how a Numbas learning resource can be uploaded to Canvas.

Student engagement is a central concept in the literature on teaching and learning in higher education. Research has shown that students’ active engagement in their learning is central to their academic success and that students who engage deeply with learning are better equipped for life-long learning. However, encouraging student engagement can be challenging. So, what can be done - how can we encourage students to engage in their learning in what, for many of us, are quite challenging times? One way of achieving this is through assessment. Assessment is probably the most important thing we can do to engage students in their learning. Traditionally, assessment practices have tended to focus on progression and completion rather than focus on enhancing student learning. If we wish to use assessment as a tool to enhance student learning the provision of feedback is crucial. We need to help students understand not only where they have gone wrong, but also what they need to do to improve and when they have done well, we need to help them understand what is good about their work and how they can build on it and develop further. This seminar outlined how staff from different discipline areas have developed their assessment practices to integrate feedback as a central component of their practice. Three different case-studies were presented and discussed with the intention of providing participants with a range of practical options that they might choose from and integrate into their own practice. The seminar was aimed at all academic staff, whether new to the whole notion of assessment and feedback, or those who wanted to improve their feedback practice with students, or those looking for ideas on how to enhance their current practice.

MORE INFO: https://tlu.cit.ie/conversations-on-teaching-and-learning-seminar-series Developing an Ethos of Authentic Assessment A Seminar Funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education as part of the Teaching and Learning Unit (TLU), MTU Cork's Conversations on Teaching and Learning (CoTaL) Winter 2021/22 Seminar Series Presented By: Dr Pio Fenton, Head, Marketing & International Business, MTU Cork Michele McManus, Lecturer, Marketing & International Business, MTU Cork Conor Kelleher, Lecturer, Marketing & International Business, MTU Cork Elaine O’Brien, Lecturer, Marketing & International Business, MTU Cork Authentic assessment is a means of providing assessment opportunities which are like tasks in the ‘real world’. Students are asked to thoughtfully apply their acquired skills to a new situation or environment. Assessments are considered authentic if they are realistic, require judgement and innovation and assess students’ ability to effectively use their knowledge or skills to complete a task. This seminar presented the experiences from the Marketing discipline at Munster Technological University in developing a comprehensive approach to the use of authentic assessment as a means of fostering student engagement and developing collaboration with businesses. Adopting the perspective of a "work in progress" the presentation challenged participants around the ongoing reliance on terminal examination and similar mechanisms, while also reflecting the realities of delivering complicated assessment mechanisms with large-sized student groups.