Phil's Big idea 5

Well the papers are rolling in - and out to reviewers - thanks everyone for following the guidelines so well. It should be about 3 weeks before some decisions are made.

In the mean time, for your academic pleasure, here is the final installment in Phil Race's 5 big ideas about feedback.
(BTW: Next post you can look forward to hearing from our keynote - Catherine Tang).

All the best,
Diana

Formative assessment and feedback is more important than end-of-module summative assessment

Perhaps there should be a rule that a maximum of 30% of credit can go to any ‘end-of-….’ assessment, and that 70% of the assessment should be ‘along the journey’ rather than ‘at the destination’. The least valuable ‘feedback’ is ‘just a mark or grade’ at the end of something – students rarely want to go back and find out exactly what they did really well or badly when something is ‘over’. And while we’re making such radical changes, perhaps any assessment format (e.g. time-constrained unseen exams, essays, reports, presentations, …) should not be allowed to exceed one-fifth of the overall assessment for a course, module, year, whatever, so that the mix of assessment and feedback can be suitably enriched.

For more of Phil’s recent writing on feedback and assessment, please see:
· www.phil-race.com
· Race, P and Pickford, R (2007) Making Teaching Work London: Sage.
· Race, P (2007) How to Get a Good Degree: 2nd edition Maidenhead: Open University Press (book for students).
· Race, P (2006) The Lecturer’s Toolkit: 3rd edition London: Routledge.
· Race, P (2005) Making Learning Happen London: Sage.
· Brown, S, Smith, B and Race, P (2005) 500 Tips on Assessment London: Routledge.
· Race, P (2003) How to Study Oxford: Blackwell (also now published in Chinese, Malaysian, Ukrainian, and Spanish) (book for students).