The way in which students engage with and learn from the multiple sources of feedback available to them is a key issue in the enhancement of student learning in HE. Well-designed assessment tasks and associated feedback can yield large learning gains compared to a variety of other educational interventions. In the transition from school to higher education, students often struggle to understand what is expected of them on academic tasks. Formal statements of assessment criteria are typically insufficient to build the task understanding and evaluative expertise that students need in order to monitor their own learning and performance. Increasing opportunities for dialogic feedback (interactions between lecturers and students, students and students and students own internal conversations) while students are doing the assessment task may result in better learning outcomes. All of these issues were brought together by five UK based Assessment and Feedback researchers who discussed and interrogated these concepts with 80 delegates.
The day began with a Professor Therese Hopfenbeck, Director, Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment, University of Oxford who discussed The Assessment-for-learning (AfL) movement in primary and secondary education. Professor Tansy Jessop then moved the conversation towards programmatic assessment. In order to bridge the gaps between school-based research and HE research a panel discussion followed. Later in the Symposium delegates heard about specific case studies from across the UK HE sector that highlighted how students were exposed to new paradigms of assessment and feedback. Dr Natalie Usher Oxford Centre for Educational Assessment, University of Oxford, discussed university students’ development of evaluative expertise for essay writing in literature through peer assessment activities. Dr Naomi Winstone (Department of Higher Education, University of Surrey) moved the conversation onto how university students receive and cognitively process feedback. Finally, Dr Edd Pitt (CSHE, University of Kent) proposed his latest research on dialogic feedback between staff and students. The end of the day concluded with a panel discussion made up of all the presenters from the day. Delegates were asked many questions that sought to make links between the similarities and difference between school and HE models of assessment and feedback. Following the event, a special issue for the Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice journal entitled Advancing Assessment and Feedback Processes that Incorporate Disciplinary Practices was commissioned. The organisers of the event Dr Pitt and Professor Quinlan will act as Guest Editors.