Professor Berry O'Donovan

A key responsibility of higher education providers is the accurate certification of the knowledge and skills attained by their students. However, despite an intense focus on developing relevant quality assurance regulations, academic standards in higher education have remained resistant to explication and consistent application. In this paper, we initially deconstruct and evaluate academic standards and dominant practitioner perspectives on their nature and use, including techno-rational, sociocultural and sociomaterial approaches. The limited prior research on the effectiveness of calibration and social moderation processes is reviewed, highlighting the significant challenges in sharing tacitly held understandings of assessment criteria (attributes of quality) and standards (levels of achievement). Further complications are considered that arise from the varying expertise and power relationships of assessors and the complexities inherent in the development and use of codified artefacts for capturing and sharing standards. We opine that because of the difficulties in clearly representing and agreeing standards, it is unsurprising that there is little evidence of marking consistency to be found in the literature even in contexts where carefully crafted artefacts, such as rubrics, are in use. We conclude that effectiveness would be enhanced through sharing understandings more widely and refocusing the use of assessment codifications towards how they may catalyse effective social moderation and calibration dialogues. Dialogues that foreground individuals’ positions of consensus and dissensus at significant points of interpretation in the assessment process are identified within the paper.

HE institutions persistently seek to increase student engagement and satisfaction with assessment feedback, but with limited success. This study identifies the attributes of good feedback from the perspective of recipients. In a distinctive participatory research design, student participants were invited to bring along actual examples of feedback that they perceived as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to 32 interviews with student researchers. Findings highlight the complex interdependency and contextual nature of key influences on students’ perspectives. The feedback artefact itself, its place in assessment and feedback design, relationships of the learner with peers and tutors, and students’ assessment literacy all affect students’ perspectives. We conclude that standardising the technical aspects of feedback, such as the feedback artefact or the timing or medium of its delivery is insufficient: a broader consideration of all key domains of influence is needed to genuinely increase student engagement and satisfaction with feedback.

It is clear from the literature that feedback is potentially the most powerful and potent part of the assessment cycle when it comes to improving further student learning.  However, for some time, there has been a growing amount of research evidence that much feedback practice does not fulfil this potential to influence future student learning because it fails in a host of different ways.  This dilemma of the disjuncture between theory and practice has been increasingly highlighted by the UK National Student Survey results.  This paper uses a model of the assessment process cycle to frame understandings drawn from the literature, and argues that the problem with much current practice resides largely in a failure to effectively engage students with feedback.  The paper goes on to explore how best to effectively engage students with assessment feedback, with evidenced examples of feedback strategies that have successfully overcome this problem.

Assessment is currently in the spotlight for its poor ratings in student satisfaction surveys and"under performance" in quality reviews. Consequently, a variety of initiatives and projects are being undertaken aimed at improving assessment. However, many of the concepts and theories underpinning assessment practice are complex and interrelated, which can mean that relatively simple and apparently minor changes can have major, and often unintended, consequences. This paper was initially prepared to foreground an internal document providing diagnosis and recommendations for change to assessment strategy and policy in a post-1992 university. It draws on a wide body of literature and research studies to distil and discuss key issues, which should inform assessment decisions. These key issues provide a framework to examine assessment policy and practice and enable the alignment of assessment policy with the beliefs and values of an institution.

Constraints in resourcing and student dissatisfaction with assessment feedback mean that the effectiveness of our feedback practices has never been so important. Drawing on findings from a three-year study focused on student engagement with feedback, this paper reveals the limited extent to which effectiveness can be accurately measured and challenges many of the assumptions and beliefs about effectiveness of feedback practices. Difficulties relating to multiple purposes of feedback, its temporal nature and the capabilities of evaluators reveal that measuring effectiveness is fraught with difficulty. The paper argues that the learner is in the best position to judge the effectiveness of feedback, but may not always recognise the benefits it provides. Therefore, the pedagogic literacy of students is key to evaluation of feedback and feedback processes.

This paper examines the intellectual development of undergraduates with reference to research undertaken with a cohort of undergraduates on entry to a business and management degree. Using Baxter Magolda’s Measure of Epistemological Reflection (1992; 2001), findings indicate that the majority of new students hold dualistic and absolute beliefs in which knowledge is seen as certain and a transmission approach to teaching valued. Statistical cross tabulations on age, gender, nationality and academic performance revealed two of significance, academic performance and nationality, and these are discussed along with the wider implications for learning, teaching and assessment. The paper concludes that intellectual development of students can be supported by appropriate assessment and learning activities, and that there are strong arguments for commencing an intentional process early in the unfrozen, transitional period of the first year of an undergraduate degree. Such a process may result in an uncomfortable student experience and therefore provoke negative student evaluation. Consequently, students need to understand the development process and reasoning behind adopted pedagogies, not only to militate against negative course evaluation and alleviate anxiety, but also to support their intellectual development. It takes time for substantive intellectual development to occur and a programme approach is a necessity.