The need to disentangle assessment and feedback in higher education

Winstone, NE; Boud, D

The need to disentangle assessment and feedback in higher education

Winstone, NE Boud, D

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Publisher:: Routledge
Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Studies in Higher Education, 2021
Issue Date:: 2021-01-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Winstone, NE
dc.contributor.author	Boud, D https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6883-2722
dc.date.accessioned	2021-04-09T03:12:31Z
dc.date.available	2021-08-12T19:00:57Z
dc.date.issued	2021-01-01
dc.identifier.citation	Studies in Higher Education, 2021
dc.identifier.issn	0307-5079
dc.identifier.issn	1470-174X
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/147928
dc.description.abstract	© 2020, © 2020 Society for Research into Higher Education. In contemporary higher education systems, the processes of assessment and feedback are often seen as coexisting activities. As a result, they have become entangled in both policy and practice, resulting in a conceptual and practical blurring of their unique purposes. In this paper, we present a critical examination of the issues created by the entanglement of assessment and feedback, arguing that it is important to ensure that the legitimate purposes of both feedback and assessment are not compromised by inappropriate conflation of the two. We situate our argument in the shifting conceptual landscape of feedback, where there is increasing emphasis on students being active players in feedback processes working with and applying information from others to future learning tasks, rather than regarding feedback as a mechanism of transmission of information by teachers. We surface and critically discuss six problems created by the entanglement of assessment and feedback: students’ focus on grades; comments justifying grades rather than support learning; feedback too late to be useful; feedback subordinated to all other processes in course design; overemphasis on documentation of feedback; and the downgrading of feedback created by requirements for anonymous marking. We then propose a series of strategies for preserving the learning function of feedback, through models that give primacy to feedback within learning cycles. We conclude by offering suggestions for research and practice that seek to engage with the challenges created by the entanglement of assessment and feedback, and that maintain the unique purposes of assessment and feedback.
dc.language	English
dc.publisher	Routledge
dc.relation.ispartof	Studies in Higher Education
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1080/03075079.2020.1779687
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess
dc.subject	1301 Education Systems, 1303 Specialist Studies in Education
dc.subject.classification	Education
dc.title	The need to disentangle assessment and feedback in higher education
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.for	1301 Education Systems
utslib.for	1303 Specialist Studies in Education
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/FASS Faculty Administration
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*
pubs.consider-herdc	false
dc.date.updated	2021-04-09T03:12:31Z
pubs.publication-status	Published

Abstract:

© 2020, © 2020 Society for Research into Higher Education. In contemporary higher education systems, the processes of assessment and feedback are often seen as coexisting activities. As a result, they have become entangled in both policy and practice, resulting in a conceptual and practical blurring of their unique purposes. In this paper, we present a critical examination of the issues created by the entanglement of assessment and feedback, arguing that it is important to ensure that the legitimate purposes of both feedback and assessment are not compromised by inappropriate conflation of the two. We situate our argument in the shifting conceptual landscape of feedback, where there is increasing emphasis on students being active players in feedback processes working with and applying information from others to future learning tasks, rather than regarding feedback as a mechanism of transmission of information by teachers. We surface and critically discuss six problems created by the entanglement of assessment and feedback: students’ focus on grades; comments justifying grades rather than support learning; feedback too late to be useful; feedback subordinated to all other processes in course design; overemphasis on documentation of feedback; and the downgrading of feedback created by requirements for anonymous marking. We then propose a series of strategies for preserving the learning function of feedback, through models that give primacy to feedback within learning cycles. We conclude by offering suggestions for research and practice that seek to engage with the challenges created by the entanglement of assessment and feedback, and that maintain the unique purposes of assessment and feedback.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/147928