The first year experience of assessment

Alison Bone (University of Brighton) lead an examination of the variety of forms of assessment used on first year law (and other) undergraduates and the implications for their learning.

Alison’s slides are embedded below.

Alison presented the initial findings of a research project examining the experience of the first year assessment of undergraduates in Brighton Business School. The first year experience (FYE) of higher education has been the subject of widespread research in the UK (Yorke & Longden, 2008; Wallace, 2003), the USA has a National Resource Center for the First Year Experience and Students in Transition and an Australian Learning and Teaching Council project resulted in an international FYE Curriculum Design Symposium in February 2009.

The FYE of assessment should be challenging and yet supportive, with students exposed to different types of assessment so they can acquire and practise a variety of skills. Ironically, as Gibbs & Simpson have identified (2004), some assessment exercises actually undermine the very learning they intend to measure. Giving students repetitive tasks such as producing essays or reports, albeit in a variety of subject contexts, may result in students coasting, ie not feeling intellectually challenged. Academic tutors with responsibility for first year courses often feel they are walking though a minefield, having to negotiate the requirements of students needing incremental formative assessment at frequent intervals (with all the associated resources this may entail) with those of experienced students, who having achieved excellent examination results in their former educational environments wish to be stretched by their assessment.

Undergraduate students in their first year at Brighton Business School study a wide variety of subjects, as the school provides courses covering accounting, business, finance and law. Each of these courses is subjected to an assessment audit, which is then evaluated by questionnaire and interviews with both staff (individual) and students (focus groups) to discover whether the mechanisms are achieving the dual functions of assessment of as well as assessment for learning. The courses have recently undergone periodic review, and yet there is still an underlying suspicion that students have an assessment load that is too heavy and that may be assessing similar skills. Cross-modular assessment is extremely rare, and the developmental aspects of assessment between subjects are not articulated.

The project enables lecturers and students to discuss in an unthreatening environment the advantages, disadvantages, strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of various forms of assessment and how they might be developed to provide challenging yet supportive assessment vehicles that will develop and test a range of transferable skills. Other schools both within and outside the university have already indicated their interest in the concept of the assessment audit and its use as a basis for informed development of practice.

The paper will introduce the results of the assessment audit and the preliminary qualitative perspectives of staff and students. It is intended that the research findings be disseminated to relevant professional and statutory bodies (including the Joint Academic Stage Board), many of whom have a traditional view of acceptable summative assessment modes.

References:

• Gibbs G & Simpson J (2004) Does your assessment support your students’ learning? (PDF file) Journal of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
• Wallace J (2003) Supporting the first year experience York: Higher Education Academy
• Yorke M & Longden B (2008) The first year experience in higher education in the UK (PDF file) York: Higher Education Academy

Ben Fitzpatrick (University of York) reports:

Alison began by reminding us that assessment need not be the only driver of learning. Students arrive at university ready to learn, keen and willing to participate – the challenge for educators is to retain that buy in.
 
Students’ social contexts impact on how they expect to learn – there are greater levels of fluidity and flexibility in professional life than has been the case for previous generations, and these factors should inform what we should expect students to do and how we should structure their leanring environment.
 
Alison’s concern was that students’ early encounters with regimes of assessment should be rationally aligned with their lives and experiences, and that there was a risk of demotivation if that were not the case. Key in understanding those experiences and in facilitating that alignment was the changing relationship between learners and information. Alison supported her presentation with a vivid and fast paced YouTube clip entitled Did you know? Technology on the nature of change in the information society, which reminded me of the clip The machine is us/ing us.
 
Alison’s research will go on to explore the understandings of assessment and its underlying rationales held by students and staff at Brighton, and will explore the proposition that in the context of assessment, how staff themselves relate to and use information and the informational tools available in contemporary society will be important in shaping good conditions for student learning.
 
Discussion among delegates surfaced some interesting examples of assessment practices, for example the editing of Wikipedia pages, which attempt the alignment with which Alison is concerned.

About Alison

Alison Bone works in the Law Subject Group at Brighton Business School, where she is course leader of the original postgraduate level CPE conversion course – there are currently only three in the UK. She writes and researches mainly on assessment and the student experience (see for example Ensuring successful assessment (1999) and the UKCLE funded project on The impact of formative assessment on student learning (2006). Her latest research examined the 21st century law student (published in The Law Teacher 45(3)).

Alison was the originator of the Law Teacher of the Year award and is a member of the judging panel.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010