Assessment and feedback are enduring issues for the higher education sector both in the UK and internationally, raising a series of challenges for staff and students. Our autumn symposium will address one of the vital aspects of assessment and feedback, focusing on the connected areas of marking practices and feedback processes.
Our busy programme comprises a morning keynote address by Dr Berry O’Donovan, an afternoon session by Professor Carol Evans, a series of participant-led workshops and presentations, and a closing plenary. Overall, the event will offer insights and solutions for the enhancement of marking and feedback practices within departmental and institutional contexts. In particular, it will address the following themes:
• Embedding feedback and feed-forward to reflect a dialogic process
• Developing assessment literacy and student understanding of standards within subject, discipline or professional areas
• Innovative approaches to peer review and peer assessment
• Building approaches for marking and moderation processes.
The symposium should appeal especially to academic leaders and professional staff with roles incorporating the oversight and design of assessment and feedback with and for learners, as well as any other staff or students involved or interested in assessment and feedback in higher education.
Our keynote
Dr Berry O’Donovan is a Principal Lecturer at the Business School, Oxford Brookes University, and will be delivering our main keynote, entitled “What makes good feedback good? Enhancing student learning from, and satisfaction with, assessment feedback”. Berry is a National Teaching Fellow and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) and she has been involved in a number of additional projects funded by the Higher Education Academy / Advance HE and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Her research centres on assessment and feedback in higher education and the intellectual development of students.
We also welcome our afternoon speaker, Professor Carol Evans, Professor of Higher Education and Academic Lead of the Higher Education Futures Institute, at the University of Birmingham. Carol’s talk will be entitled “Building Assessment Communities: the Interdisciplinary Network for Research-informed Assessment Practices” (INRAP). She will give a brief update on the development of the Advance HE Assessment and Feedback Network, and outline some of the key challenges facing the higher education community in advancing assessment practices.
Call for papers
Colleagues are invited to submit an abstract for either a 30 minute presentation or for a 60 minute workshop as per the submission guidelines and criteria before 12 September 2019. Please be aware that there are limited places!
Find out more about the assessment symposium and book now.