Engaging sport students in assessment and formative feedback

Sport as a discipline in higher education is grappling with the challenge of providing authentic and relevant assessment that engages students in their learning. The centrality of assessment to the student experience is now well accepted within the research literature (Brown and Knight, 1994; Rust, 2002). In particular, formative assessment, or assessment that creates feedback to support future teaching and learning experiences, can be a powerful tool for enhancing learning (see Black and Wiliam, 1998). Given that feedback is most effective if it is considered or reflected upon, one of the key challenges is to actively engage sport students in formative assessment processes. This guide offers advice in designing and facilitating sport students’ involvement in assessment and enhancing their engagement with the feedback they receive. The aim is to support sport programme teams by taking a pragmatic approach, combining a clear academic rationale based on assessment for learning principles with case study examples of successful formative assessment exercises emphasising innovative approaches to giving feedback. The guide consists of three key sections focused on: 1) Providing staff in HLST with background knowledge of formative assessment and formative feedback and how it relates to their subject. 2) Providing case study examples of how to effectively engage sport students with assessment feedback so that it feeds-forward to aid learning. 3) Providing a resource of references and sources of support for tutors wishing to further their learning in this area

Competency Education Series: Policy Brief One, An Emerging Federal Role for Competency Education

After two decades of standards-based reform, a new education paradigm has begun to take hold -- the rise of competency education. This new vision builds on the strong foundation of new college and career ready standards, challenging stakeholders to design an education system that emphasizes mastery of content standards and the transferable skills critical to success in college and today's workforce.A competency education system puts students at the center, replacing rigid time-based structures with flexible learning environments that ensure students receive the support and extra time they need to succeed. This highly-personalized approach provides clear, individualized pathways to student proficiency that help mobilize stakeholders around the collective goal of college and career readiness for all students. A growing number of states and districts have begun to embrace this vision for education, leading to an explosion of new policies, pilot initiatives, and tools designed to help schools implement competencybased approaches.The success of the competency movement depends heavily on the federal government's willingness to partner with states and districts as they design education systems that put students at the center. A true partnership will grant states the flexibility to innovate and develop equally ambitious accountability and assessment policies that better align with student centered education to ensure all students graduate with the knowledge and skills to succeed. This paper is the first in a series to help policymakers define the appropriate role for the federal government supporting competency education in the nation's K-12 schools

Chapter 4: New Assessment Methods

The OTiS (Online Teaching in Scotland) programme, run by the now defunct Scotcit programme, ran an International e-Workshop on Developing Online Tutoring Skills which was held between 8–12 May 2000. It was organised by Heriot–Watt University, Edinburgh and The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK. Out of this workshop came the seminal Online Tutoring E-Book, a generic primer on e-learning pedagogy and methodology, full of practical implementation guidelines. Although the Scotcit programme ended some years ago, the E-Book has been copied to the SONET site as a series of PDF files, which are now available via the ALT Open Access Repository. The editor, Carol Higgison, is currently working in e-learning at the University of Bradford (see her staff profile) and is the Chair of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT)

Squaring the circle: a new alternative to alternative-assessment

Many quality assurance systems rely on high-stakes assessment for course certification. Such methods are not as objective as they might appear; they can have detrimental effects on student motivation and may lack relevance to the needs of degree courses increasingly oriented to vocational utility. Alternative assessment methods can show greater formative and motivational value for students but are not well suited to the demands of course certification. The widespread use of virtual learning environments and electronic portfolios generates substantial learner activity data to enable new ways of monitoring and assessing students through Learning Analytics. These emerging practices have the potential to square the circle by generating objective, summative reports for course certification while at the same time providing formative assessment to personalise the student experience. This paper introduces conceptual models of assessment to explore how traditional reliance on numbers and grades might be displaced by new forms of evidence-intensive student profiling and engagement

Assessing context-based learning: Not only rigorous but also relevant

Economic factors are driving significant change in higher education. There is increasing responsiveness to market demand for vocational courses and a growing appreciation of the importance of procedural (tacit) knowledge to service the needs of the Knowledge Economy; the skills in demand are information analysis, collaborative working and 'just-in-time learning'. New pedagogical methods go some way to accommodate these skills, situating learning in context and employing information and communications technology to present realistic simulations and facilitate collaborative exchange. However, what have so far proved resistant to change are the practices of assessment. This paper endorses the case for a scholarship of assessment and proposes the development of technology-supported tools and techniques to assess context-based learning. It also recommends a fundamental rethink of the norm-referenced and summative assessment of propositional knowledge as the principal criterion for student success in universities

Supporting graduate teaching assistants in two STEM areas

No abstract available

Developing e-assessment using the quiz activity within Moodle: empowering student learning

Using formative assessment within Moodle has been shown to encourage self-directed learning (Bromham & Oprandi, 2006). Our experience of using formative assessment quizzes as stand alone entities, as well as within Moodle lessons, has been used to introduce Moodle assessment quizzes over the past year in Level 1 and Level 2 Life Sciences courses. This experience has been distilled to inform the content of this workshop. Some advantages of incorporating assessments in the form of Moodle quizzes are that they allow for quick, reproducible and flexible assessment with a relatively small initial set-up cost, and substantial long-term staff and administration savings. One significant advantage is that staff and room pressures can be reduced as students can attempt the assessment at a time and location of their choice within a specified time period. This flexibility can help to reduce student stress associated with completion of a continuous assessment for their course. It is also a relatively simple process to account for students entitled to extra time during assessments. Providing clear instructions beforehand and at the start of the quiz ensures that students understand their responsibilities for completion of this assessment and ultimately the course. There are some disadvantages and limitations to the system as it currently exists, for example there is the perceived ability for students to “cheat” by completing the assessment as a group, accessing books and the internet. Strategies to account for these can be put in place and will be discussed in detail during the workshop. This workshop aims to take the participants through the initial set up of a quiz, highlighting the various question types and how these can be used to create a challenging assessment that can be quickly graded and prove informative for staff and course development. Reference Bromham L. & Oprandi P. (2006) Evolution online: developing active and blended learning by using a virtual learning environment in an introductory biology course. Journal of Biological Education 41 (1): 21-25

The Identified Informal Learner: Recognizing Assessed Learning in the Open

Badged open courses (BOCs) were piloted on the OpenLearn platform by the Open University (OU) in the UK in 2013. These are free online course upon the completion of which, digital badges are awarded. Based on the evaluation of their impact, they now form a key strand to the OU’s free learning provision, embracing Open Educational Practices at their core. The first permanent suite of BOCs was launched on OpenLearn in 2015 and evaluated for impact, both from an outreach and a business perspective. The application of a branded open digital badge, with associated assessment and feedback has provided a mechanism to motivate and reward informal learners whilst also generating a higher than expected click-through to make an enquiry about becoming a formal student

Adopting a blended approach to learning: experiences from radiography at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

The perspective of the radiography teaching team at Queen Margaret University (QMU) was that a transmission mode of programme delivery was sub-optimal in helping students to learn and make links between theory and practice. Programme redesign adopted a blended learning approach with both face-to-face and online learning aimed at enhancing the students’ control over their own learning. Online tasks within Web Classroom Tools (WebCT) were used as an integral part of careful programme design, which resulted in a programme enabling synthesis of the skills, knowledge and competencies acquired in the academic and clinical environments. With the move towards a more learner-centred, blended educational experience for the students the lecturers’ role shifted to that of facilitator with WebCT providing the tutor with a more transparent view of student learning. Lecturers plan learning activities that build upon the skills students have developed through learning in groups, online and in class. The explicit connections that now exist between the academic programme and the opportunities for applying knowledge in practice allow students to engage more deeply in their learning