Student views of assessment and feedback

Abstract

Assessment and feedback have long been recognised as crucial aspects of the student learning experience and occupy much effort on the part of students and tutors alike. The inception of the National Student Survey has exposed the extent to which students are dissastified with assessment and feedback. This paper reports the finding of a major institution-wide survey into students' perceptions and experience of assessment and feedback. Much research on assessment is discipline-specific, but this study surveyed students from all four typrical typologies of university subjects: hard or soft, pure or applied. The findings revealed very little difference between students in terms of what they want from assessment and feedback. Indeed, not only were there few apparent connections between discipline and preference for feedback or assessment style, but this seemed to be unrelated to features such as age, mode of study or level of study. Regardless of any of these factors, students universally preferred timely one-to-one feedback