The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale study of students’ learning in response to different programme assessment patterns

By T. Jessop, Yassein El Hakim, Graham R. Gibbs. 2014

91 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Audits of 23 degree programmes in eight universities showed wide variations in assessment patterns and feedback. Scores from Assessment Experience Questionnaire returns revealed consistent relationships between characteristics of assessment and student learning responses, including a strong relationship between quantity and quality of feedback and a clear sense of goals and standards, and between both these scales and students’ overall satisfaction. Focus group data helped to explain students’ learning responses but also identified ambivalent responses to the use of formative-only assessment, particularly when it was optional. Frequently, students were unclear about goals and standards, and found feedback unhelpful when assessment demands differed across modules, and when marking standards and approaches varied widely, making it difficult for feedback to feed forwards. The methodology underpinning the Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment study described here has been used in more than 20 universities worldwide and is helping teachers to redesign assessment regimes, so that teachers’ efforts support learning better.

Subfields: Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0f15008f5f5a94cf05ac05cdfd7293891ebe411d

Citations in the corpus

• The development of student feedback literacy: enabling uptake of feedback (2018, unknown): “The consistency, range and types of feedback students experience are more meaningful when seen as a linked series of learning opportunities across an entire programme (Jessop, El Hakim, and Gibbs 2014).”