Student Agency and Engagement

Auteur

Tansy Jessop is Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Students at the University of Bristol. She leads 'Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment' (TESTA), a research and change project which has challenged education leaders across the sector to re-imagine assessment and feedback from a student perspective.

Résumé

This book offers fresh perspectives on the challenges of assessment and feedback in higher education. A must-read for university leaders, academics, and educational developers, it asks 'what if' questions to unlock some of the systemic problems of assessment and feedback. It shifts the debate to focus on students' experience at a programme level, introducing a different way of thinking about assessment and feedback, and advancing the value of theories of alienation and engagement.

Based on the 'Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment' (TESTA) project, the book discusses a method for understanding the impact of assessment and feedback on student learning. Drawing on evidence from TESTA, it provides practical insights about changing programme assessment patterns to foster student agency and engagement. The book gives impetus to changing the design assessment and feedback, inviting academics, educational leaders, and students into more transparent, open, and shared decision-making about assessment and feedback beyond the module level.

This key title is designed to support academics and educational leaders to making sustainable and systemic improvements to the pedagogy of assessment. It expands on good principles, practices, and theories about how students learn from assessment and feedback by paying attention to a programme level perspective of the student experience.

Contenu

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Part I: TESTA's research and change process

Introduction: Why another book on assessment and feedback?

Chapter 1: A research methodology for transforming students' experience

Chapter 2: The TESTA method: tools, techniques, and approaches

Part II: Alienation and engagement

Chapter 3: Alienation in assessment: Opening Pandora's box

Chapter 4: The wider context of alienation in higher education

Part III: Engaging assessment and feedback: From analysis to practice

Chapter 5. From alienation to engagement in assessment design

Chapter 6. From alienation to engagement: Realising the promise of feedback

Chapter 7: From alienation to engagement: Internalising standards

Chapter 8: Reflections on TESTA's educational change process

Part IV: The future: New horizons and challenges

Epilogue: TESTA in a post-pandemic world

Appendix A: TESTA case study: BA (Hons) X: Poppletown University
Appendix B: Assessment experience questionnaire (V3.3)
Appendix C: Assessment experience questionnaire (V4.0)
Appendix D: Assessment experience questionnaire (V5.1)
Appendix E: TESTA Focus Group questions

Index