Towards Assessment for Learning in Higher Education: engaging students in assessment and feedback processes

Presented By:

Professor Kay Sambell, Professor of Higher Education Pedagogy, Department of Learning and Teaching Enhancement, Edinburgh Napier University

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Workshop Description:

How can we design assessment tasks so they inspire our students to learn? How can we use assessment to enthuse our learners, and keep them engaged? What are the processes which underpin effective feedback and what are some of the barriers and challenges we face in helping students’ uptake of feedback? How can we approach feedback so that it is meaningful and useful to students, but manageable for ourselves? How far and in what ways do we involve students in the process of evaluative judgment, so they learn to see how they are going while they are working on tasks? These are some of the questions and issues that we will explore and discuss in this interactive seminar on engaging students in assessment and feedback processes.

By the end of this seminar, participants will have:

• Explored key principles underpinning the design of Assessment for Learning (AfL) in Higher Education (Sambell et al, 2013), which include assessment for and as learning;

• Discussed the benefits, challenges and strategies colleagues in different disciplines use to engage learners as productively as possible in assessment and feedback processes;

• Gained access to practical AfL resources, shared ideas with each other and considered pragmatic tactics to develop students’ assessment and feedback literacy.

Presenter Biography:

Professor Kay Samball joined the Department of Learning and Teaching Enhancement at Edinburgh Napier University, in January 2017. She brought with her a long track record of conducting pedagogic research and extensive experience of leading innovation as a Professor of Learning and Teaching at Northumbria University. She combined her interests in HE pedagogy with over twenty-five years’ experience as a practicing lecturer in the interdisciplinary area of Childhood and Youth Studies, where she specialised in Children’s Literature. She is a UK National Teaching Fellow (2002) and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Kay is known both nationally and internationally for her contributions to the Assessment for Learning (AfL) movement in Higher Education, which seeks, as far as possible, to emphasise the ways in which assessment can support and develop students’ learning, as well as measure it. Her interest in this aspect of academic practice began as long ago as the mid-nineties, when she joined a research team investigating the impact of innovative assessment on students’ experiences of learning. Since then she’s been actively involved in a range of research projects and initiatives focused on improving student learning via assessment. For instance, she was Director of Assessment for Learning (AfL) Enhancement in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) where she was involved in the development of a holistic model to guide AfL practice development which is outlined in the book, Assessment for Learning in Higher Education. She also helped to establish and support a series of international conferences aimed at rethinking assessment practice, including the popular Assessment in Higher Education (AHE) conference.

Her interests range broadly, however, and, amongst other things, she has focused on academic literacy, the first year experience and student engagement. She has a sustained record of publications, including journal articles, student text books, research-based texts and practitioner guides. She particularly enjoys working and writing collaboratively and her latest book, Professionalism in Practice: New Directions in Learning, Teaching and Assessment in HE, is co-authored with Sally Brown and Linda Graham.