1 March 2017: Getting Started in Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education

Presenter: Sally Brown, Independent consultant and Emerita Professor, Leeds Beckett University, UK.

Hosted by Dr Mathew Hillier, Monash University, Australia. Starting 07:00AM UTC/GMT. Duration 1 hour.

This webinar was aimed at those new to teaching in higher education and explored how to get started in assessment and feeedback.

Starting out with assessment can be terrifying. People often ask themselves questions like: How do I know how good this work is? There are such diverse responses how do I know which ones are the highest quality? How do I know if my marks match up to those of my fellow assessors? How much damage will I do to a student if I get their mark wrong? How much feedback should I give to students? What kinds of tone should I adopt? Is it more important to concentrate on telling the student about the things they have done wrong, or to give them advice on how to improve on the next assignment, or both? How am I going to cope with the workload? How do I set about designing a decent assignment for my module? How will I know if it is too easy or too hard? What kind of assessment methods should I use? Should I just stick to exams and MCQs or maybe try something a bit different? How risky would that be and what will happen to me if I stuff things up?

Several questions were address in this webinar, for those new to assessing in higher education, which concentrates on matters including:

• Matching marks to criteria;
• Assuring standards;
• Ensuring inter-assessor and intra-assessor reliability;
• Effective Assessment design;
• Giving effective feedback.

While the session didn't provide cast-iron solutions to all these questions it did provide support and practical advice to those new in role as HE assessors.

Sally Brown enjoys life as an Independent Consultant and Emerita Professor at Leeds Beckett University where she was, until July 2010, Pro Vice Chancellor (Academic). She is also Visiting Professor at the Universities of Plymouth, South Wales and Liverpool John Moores. In holds an Honorary Doctorate from Plymouth University and an Honorary D Litt from Kingston University. She is chair of the Association of National Teaching Fellows, a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, is a Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) Senior Fellow and a UK National Teaching Fellow. She publishes extensively on teaching, learning and particularly assessment.

Further information

• Slide Set: TA_webinar_1_mar_2017_slides.pdf [1.1MB] [PPTx 1.2MB]
• Chat Log (edited for clarity): TA_webinar_1_mar_2017_chat_log.txt
• Presenter profile pages:
  • Sally's website it at http://sally-brown.net/

Links shared during the session

• East Anglia assessment album
• HEA marked improvement
• Assessment for Learning by Northumbria PDF 94kb.
• UTAS choosing and designing assessment

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