{"id":287,"date":"2024-01-25T14:50:31","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T14:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/?p=287"},"modified":"2024-01-25T15:59:10","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T15:59:10","slug":"new-resources-assessment-brief-and-programme-perspectives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/2024\/01\/25\/new-resources-assessment-brief-and-programme-perspectives\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning from Sprints"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hurrah! our teams have recently added new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/learning-and-teaching\/effective-practice\/assessment\/\">assessment resources<\/a> to the Effective Practice branch of our Teaching and Learning site.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/learning-and-teaching\/effective-practice\/assessment\/assessment-brief\/\">Writing an Effective Assessment Brief | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk)<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/learning-and-teaching\/effective-practice\/assessment\/programme-assessment\/\">Programme Focussed Assessment | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk)<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Both of these draw on the outputs and findings from our Assessment and Feedback Sprints. I was delighted to be part of one of these, bringing together student, academic and PS colleagues to tackle common issues that student experience with assessment.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this post I can fill you in on the background to new resources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Assessment briefs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Sprint 4 was all about Student Transitions &#8211; highlighting the real differences between assessment at school and the expectations of University.  One of the sprint team&#8217;s outputs was student facing poster comparing the differences between these two settings.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We set out to explore the University perspective &#8211; what can we do to make assessment clearer to students.  Under Sarah Graham&#8217;s oversight we gathered together LTDS and Library colleagues to find out what we could do when presenting and writing assessments to make it easier for students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Michelle kept us on track, checked in with scholarship and drafted principles<\/li><li>Matt and Glen delved into our Stage 1 Canvas modules to find examples of good assessment briefs and to detail key things we could learn from these. <\/li><li>Module leaders responded generously to my requests to share examples. (It was great to see some that derived from templates agreed at school level.)<\/li><li>Maddie and Matt created a Canvas assessment template with placeholders to act as prompts. If all goes well, we&#8217;ll be using this as  a starting point in conversations around the 2024\/25 Canvas Blueprints.<\/li><li>Gemma looked over the common concerns that students brought to the Writing Development Centre and flipped this to describe how to author assessment tasks and avoid these stress inducing pitfalls.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Although our initial focus had been transitioning students we realised that what we had created was pertinent at all levels &#8211; hence we&#8217;ve published this as a generic resource!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>View the resource: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/learning-and-teaching\/effective-practice\/assessment\/assessment-brief\/\">Writing an Effective Assessment Brief | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a final step, we drafted an outline for a workshop that we could deliver to programme teams and academic schools. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Programme Focussed Assessment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Our modular degree programmes bring flexibility and efficiency, but can lead to a compartmentalised approach to learning where students struggle to see the connections between their learning across modules. It was this issue that we wrestled with in Sprint 5: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>How do we articulate a meaningful programme experience that ensures a cohesive assessment journey for all our students?<\/p><cite>Problem Statement <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Our second web resource zooms out to take a programme level view of assessment, starting with six principles and then offering practical suggestions on how to review assessments from a programme perspective.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Key principles<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Assessments at module level contribute to programme level learning outcomes.&nbsp;<\/li><li>The linkage between assessment tasks across the stage and programme are clear to students.&nbsp;<\/li><li>The assessment mix supports student skill development \u2013 assessments are authentic, relevant and diverse.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li><li>The assessment workload for students is manageable over each stage.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li><li>Assessments are spaced so that students have opportunities to act on feedback.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li><li>The programme team negotiate shared feedback practices.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>To find out more go to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/learning-and-teaching\/effective-practice\/assessment\/programme-assessment\/\">Programme Focussed Assessment | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Journey maps and journals<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Hop over to our Learning and Teaching blog to see two of the outputs from this sprint:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/ltdev\/2023\/03\/09\/visualising-programme-level-assessment\/\">visualising programme assessment\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/ltdev\/2023\/03\/20\/enabling-students-to-plan-for-and-reflect-on-programme-level-assessment\/\">enabling students to plan and reflect on programme level assessment<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hurrah! our teams have recently added new assessment resources to the Effective Practice branch of our Teaching and Learning site. Writing an Effective Assessment Brief | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk) Programme Focussed Assessment | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk) Both of these draw on the outputs &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/2024\/01\/25\/new-resources-assessment-brief-and-programme-perspectives\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Learning from Sprints&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nualadavis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}