1st Edition
Student Agency and Engagement Transforming Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education
This book offers fresh perspectives on the challenges of assessment and feedback in higher education. A must-read for university leaders, academics, and educational developers, it asks ‘what if’ questions to unlock some of the systemic problems of assessment and feedback. It shifts the debate to focus on students’ experience at a programme level, introducing a different way of thinking about assessment and feedback, and advancing the value of theories of alienation and engagement.
Based on the ‘Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment’ (TESTA) project, the book discusses a method for understanding the impact of assessment and feedback on student learning. Drawing on evidence from TESTA, it provides practical insights about changing programme assessment patterns to foster student agency and engagement. The book gives impetus to changing the design assessment and feedback, inviting academics, educational leaders, and students into more transparent, open, and shared decision-making about assessment and feedback beyond the module level.
This key title is designed to support academics and educational leaders to making sustainable and systemic improvements to the pedagogy of assessment. It expands on good principles, practices, and theories about how students learn from assessment and feedback by paying attention to a programme level perspective of the student experience.
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Part I: TESTA’s research and change process
Introduction: Why another book on assessment and feedback?
Chapter 1: A research methodology for transforming students’ experience
Chapter 2: The TESTA method: tools, techniques, and approaches
Part II: Alienation and engagement
Chapter 3: Alienation in assessment: Opening Pandora’s box
Chapter 4: The wider context of alienation in higher education
Part III: Engaging assessment and feedback: From analysis to practice
Chapter 5. From alienation to engagement in assessment design
Chapter 6. From alienation to engagement: Realising the promise of feedback
Chapter 7: From alienation to engagement: Internalising standards
Chapter 8: Reflections on TESTA’s educational change process
Part IV: The future: New horizons and challenges
Epilogue: TESTA in a post-pandemic world
Appendix A: TESTA case study: BA (Hons) X: Poppletown University
Appendix B: Assessment experience questionnaire (V3.3)
Appendix C: Assessment experience questionnaire (V4.0)
Appendix D: Assessment experience questionnaire (V5.1)
Appendix E: TESTA Focus Group questions
Index
Biography
Tansy Jessop is Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Students at the University of Bristol. She leads ‘Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment’ (TESTA), a research and change project which has challenged education leaders across the sector to re-imagine assessment and feedback from a student perspective.
