A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Assessing student learning
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opportunities for feedback, but like all methods of assessment it has disadvantages as well
as advantages (Bull and McKenna, 2004).
Interrogating practice
What are the most frequently used assessment methods in your department?
Do they reflect a conceptual-change student-focused or informationtransmission
teacher-focused approach?
Feedback to support learning
Another important element of assessment design is incorporating feedback. This is a
complex matter, involving the distinction between formative and summative assessment.
Summative assessment is defined as that which contributes to a grade and overall
calculation of the degree classification, whereas formative assessment is defined as that
which enables students to see how well they are progressing and gives them feedback. It
is perfectly possible for summative assessment to have a formative component; indeed,
that might be more desirable than much common assessment practice, when the
assessment (either coursework or exam) comes at the end of the course. This means
students are sometimes not concerned to pick up their marked work, as it has little
relevance to them to either improve their learning or to improve their grades for the next
assessment (often of a different course or module). The problem with students not taking
any notice of feedback can be pretty exasperating for lecturers but this is not always the
case. Higgins et al. (2002) found that students were ‘conscientious consumers’ of feedback,
so one of the problems may well reside in the timing of both assessment and feedback (see
Maclellan, 2001).
Yorke (2003) argues that although there is a wide acceptance of the importance of
formative feedback, it is not generally well understood and we need to be far more aware
of its theoretical underpinning. In so doing we should take into account disciplinary
epistemology, theories of intellectual and moral development, stages of intellectual
development and the psychology of giving and receiving feedback. Thinking through the
implications of Yorke’s comments, the author has taken the widely cited ‘seven principles
of good feedback’ put forward by Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006), and added her own
interpretations. In so doing she has focused on coursework, but readers are encouraged
to think through how such principles might be applied to examinations or tests in their
own discipline.
1 Facilitates the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning
This might be more appropriate at later stages in a student’s degree than perhaps at the
start of their programme as they progress through stages of intellectual development