Contextual Background.
I taught students from two different performance BA’s together, for 3 hours a week over the duration of 8 weeks. One of the key challenges for learning and exchanging feedback, was that as a HPL, I was not involved in the formative assessments, due to the organisation of the unit, and time /budget constraints. The unit is holistically assessed, and normally on these courses the performance outcome will be part of the summative assessment (usually alongside a portfolio). However, in this case, a portfolio is the only submission for summative assessment, which meant that students needed to document verbally, and visually their process, as well as write reflectively whilst weaving in theoretical stance points. This was another key challenge.
Evaluation
There are elements of “authentic assessment” (2018, Villaroel V) happening within my teaching, where, through the creation of an ensemble performance, as a tutor I am holding in mind professional standards, both while assessing (formatively or summatively) as well as within the live feedback in the sessions (the mini crits). I believe this is the less tangible, and implicit mode of assessing as I am continually thinking of real world relevance, and application of skills in the profession (2018, Villaroel V). That said, the main focus of assessment is Constructive Alignment: supporting learning activities appropriate to achieving the desired learning outcomes (2007, Biggs). I’m assessing as closely to professional standards as possible, whilst including the academic context and the process taken to achieve the desired learning outcomes in the spectrum of ways to evidence them, I.e. from satisfactory to excellent.
Over the course of the unit, students received continual “live” feedback, both tutor 1:1 feedback, and group feedback (tutor and peer) within the sessions. This enabled a flow of “constructive criticism from similar minds” (2008, Brooks K, pg4). In some weeks I followed this up by writing the verbal feedback in an e-mail.
All this said, in this unit, I found that the students from one of the courses were dishearten with their grades, and not clear as to why they were assessed as they were. Despite receiving tutorials regarding how and when they would be assessed, as well as supporting lectures on portfolio submissions, and clear questions to structure their portfolios, students seemed to focus on the grade as opposed to the nature of how they fulfilled the assessment criteria. I believe this lack of understanding (of their grade) was in part because their summative assessment was done by a different tutor, who co-lead some of the teaching, and was not their first marker for the summative assessment. I.e. it was difficult for some of the student link the feedback from me, to the feedback from their other tutor in the summative assessment.
Moving forwards.
It was hard for some students to commit to weekly feedbacks, and as mentioned above not all students were able to join the dots between the “live” feedback, the formative assessment and the summative. Thinking that, ‘…Information does not become “feedback” unless it is provided within a system that can use that information to affect future performance’ (2011, William, pg 4), I believe that an [explicit] question for their portfolio to include reflections on both their formative assessment, as well as weekly feedback (mini crits) within their portfolio submission would help students make the links between week to week feedback, formative assessment (the midpoint check-in), and the final outcome.
In my previous institution, self-assessments were part of all syllabi, and I have found them to be useful to enable open discussions over assessments and grades. Therefore, if I were to have more time with the students, I would also implement, self-assessments (Race 2001), within the formative and summative assessment, using the UAL assessment criteria rubric to help students understand the differences in the grades. For example, helping a student to understand that if they consider their work to be “good”, then this would be good evidence of the criteria, which is a C grade. Having this dialogue, I have found helps students to align their observations of their work with mine, but also gives them an opportunity to discuss their grade, before being handed feedback two weeks after the unit has finished (2008, Brookes K).
It is of course, ideal that the tutor doing the summative assessment is involved with the formative assessment. Placing myself in the shoes of a student, who already has difficulty in engaging and understanding the university structures as a working system, it makes no sense to have different tutors doing formative and summative assessment. Although we communicated continually with one another (my peer and I), this was perhaps not evident to students. Therefore, I would insist that time, within my contractual hours, be given for both formative and summative assessment, as well as 1:1 Tutorials.
Linking back to my thoughts in case study 2. Less is more. Perhaps less delivery, but a more “allrounder” approach to the unit as whole would be more appropriate: i.e. yielding delivery time to help students connect the dots with assessments would be better for this experience and ultimately for assessing their learning.
Bibliography
Biggs, J. B. (2007), Chapter 4, Using constructive Alignment in outcomes based teaching and learning in Using Consttuctive Alignment: University Press.
Brooks, K (2008), : ‘Could do Better?’: students’ critique of written feedback. https://23045626.myblog.arts.ac.uk/files/2024/04/Brooks-2008-Students-critique-of-feedback-in-AD.pdf
Race P (2001), Student guide to assessment, https://phil-race.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Assessment_guide_for_students.pdf
Villarroel, V. et al. (2018) ‘Authentic assessment: creating a blueprint for course design’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(5), pp. 840-854.
William, D. (2011) ‘What is assessment for learning’, Studies in Educational
Evaluation, 37(1), pp. 3–14.