Making assessment work for you: Pragmatic ways of assessing students in large classes
Sally Brown Emerita Professor, Leeds Beckett University Visiting Professor at University of Plymouth, Liverpool John Moores University, Edge Hill University and University of South Wales Deputy Events Officer, Association of National Teaching Fellows
Increasingly staff in universities and colleges are finding assessment workloads difficult to manage, as cohort sizes rise and there is pressure to provide students with more and better feedback. Formative feedback, that is developmental and supportive, and given at the right stage so that it guides future performance can be exceptionally powerful in improving achievement and retention. Moreover, feedback and ‘feed-forward’ must be integral to student learning programmes, rather than something that students opt into, so needs to be within live or virtual face-to-face interaction. However, designing and delivery good assessment systems can be time-consuming. Recognising that it is challenging to assess and give feedback well, this workshop will explore a range of viable and pragmatic ways to do so effectively and efficiently, and to encourage students to trust and make good use of the feedback they receive.
ahenetwork.org 