2021: Enabling student agency in assessment and feedback

This panel session is jointly presented by Transforming Assessment and the Assessment in Higher Education Network (UK).

Session chair: Fabio Arico (University of East Anglia, UK)
Sessions are hosted by Professor Geoffrey Crisp, DVC Academic, University of Canberra and Dr Mathew Hillier, Macquarie University, Australia.

Presenter 1: Juuso Nieminen (University of Eastern Finland, Finland)
“Finally studying for myself! Promoting student agency through self-assessment”
Promoting student agency’ is often named as an important goal for 21st century assessment. However, the concept of ‘agency’ is rarely elaborated in assessment research. Also, what remains understudied is how assessment, and self-assessment in particular, could promote students’ agency in test-driven assessment cultures. In this presentation, ‘agency’ is conceptualised through a sociocultural approach, shifting the focus from psychological understanding of individual agency to the structures of assessment in higher education.

Presenter 2: Rachel Forsyth – (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
“Thinking differently about satisfaction with assessment and feedback”
The first presentation in this panel shows that students respond well to opportunities to participate more actively in assessment design. This reflects our longitudinal analysis of open comments about assessment and feedback from an internal student satisfaction survey; students consistently focus on their engagement with assignment tasks and the ways in which staff support, and organise these, and rarely comment on marking and feedback. In the session, we will explore the things students say about assessment, and how this information could be used to design more engaging, and more agentic, assessment.

Click here to register and find out more about the session