The impact of formative assessment on student learning

UKCLE PDF project

Project leader: Alison Bone, University of Brighton (e-mail: a.bone@bton.ac.uk)
Project summary: an exploration of the different forms of feedback provided to students across law schools
Completion date: December 2006
UKCLE funding: £13,450

A great deal has been written about how using effective assessment can promote learning, but surprisingly little research has been done on assessment in law. This project aimed to fill the gap by examining the use of formative assessment in a sample of law schools.

Project aims

• analyse the different types of feedback provided to students
• evaluate the effectiveness of feedback as perceived by tutors and students
• analyse how feedback impacts on learning

Findings

The research highlighted a diverse range of practices in a small sample of law schools. The following key findings emerged:

• more ‘old’ ‘universities set formative assessment tasks than ‘new’ universities
• large student numbers and lack of time were the reasons given for not setting such assessment
• students in the survey were not provided with assessment criteria for coursework
• generic feedback was not given on assessment
• marks and timing were felt to be crucial by the students
• students expressed a wish to be given the opportunity to obtain feedback before attempting summative assessment

Recommendations

• Students should be given an opportunity to obtain formative feedback on their progress before they submit a summative piece of work. If large student numbers and/or poor staff/student ratios preclude the setting of a formal piece of assessment, there are other ways of giving such feedback.
• Clear assessment criteria, written specifically for the piece of work to be attempted, should be given to students at the time the assessed work is set, and feedback should make specific reference to these criteria.
• Generic feedback covering key points is found to be useful and saves time for lecturers, who can refer to it rather than repeating the same remarks in detail on several pieces of work. The jury is still out on whether or not model answers are a ‘good thing’.
• Feedback must be prompt to be of any use. It is good practice to set a ‘hand back’ date as well as a ‘hand in’ date, so students know exactly when they can expect their work to be returned. Ideally the two dates should not be more than three weeks apart.
• Assessment processes must be as transparent as possible.

Outcomes

Alison is continuing her research into the use of formative assessment in law – see Designing learning by promoting formative assessment, a paper presented at Learning in Law Annual Conference 2008.

• The impact of formative assessment on student learning: a law based study, download link at bottom the of the page (final report; RTF file, 27 pages, 188KB)
• “The impact of formative assessment on student learning: work in progress” (paper presented at LILI 2005)
  Papers on the project were also made at the 2004 and 2005 Society of Legal Scholars conferences and at LILI 2006.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010