In at the Deep End - Starting to teach in Higher Education

Table of Contents

1. Welcome
2. Section 1: Learning
3. Section 2: Teaching
4. Section 3: Assessment
   1. Assessment, marking and feedback to students
   2. Summative and formative assessment
   3. Assessment matters to students
   4. The sharp end of learning and teaching
   5. Fit-for-purpose assessment is valid, reliable, transparent and authentic - and manageable!
   6. Beyond exams, essays and reports
   7. Setting questions for essays and exams
   8. Designing marking schemes
   9. Marking students' work
   10. Making the most of feedback to students
   11. Maximising learning payoff through feedback
5. References

Assessment matters to students

Students are often quite strategic about their learning - if it counts towards their overall qualifications they will do it, if it doesn't, many won't! This, in fact, is an intelligent response to the situation students often find themselves in - a heavy burden of coursework assessment and looming exams and final assignments.

Yet assessment and feedback are areas where students are least satisfied with their experiences of higher education, as shown by the data from the annual National Student Survey in the UK.

It is probably the case that students who are highly successful in assessment are perfectly satisfied with the feedback they get, and that student dissatisfaction with assessment and feedback is attributable to students who fare less well, and perhaps rightly believe they could have done better if they had been given enough formative feedback early enough to improve their performance.