An end point or an integral part of a teaching and learning process

First year curriculum organising principles

• Assessment The first year curriculum should assist students to make a successful transition to assessment in higher education, while assessment should increase in complexity from the first to later years of curriculum design. Critically, students should receive regular, formative evaluations of their work early in their program of study to aid their learning and to provide feedback to both students and staff on student progress and achievement.

7 principles of good feedback

1. Helps clarify what good performance is2. Facilitates the development of self-assessment3. Delivers high quality information to students about their

learning4. Encourages teachers and peer dialogue around learning5. Encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-estemm6. Provides opportunities to close the gap between current

and desired performance7. Provides information to teachers that can be used to

help shape teachingDavid J. Nicol & Debra Macfarlane Dick (2006) Formative assessment and self regulated ‐ ‐learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice, Studies in Higher Education, 31:2, 199-218,

This session

• Planning for assessment

• Teaching for and about assessment

• Feedback to close learning gaps

• So what do we keep doing and what do we change

First year, first

semester Department

of Sport students

Diploma and Bachelor students

School leavers4 – 8 years out

of schoolMature students

More males than females

Approx 65% identify as Maori or

Pacific

Approximately 90 students

Sport Culture

Introducing Student A

What really helped me was attending one of the Unitec writing workshops. Learning about topic sentences and structuring academic paragraphs was a foreign concept to me but it really helped me get through my assignments especially in the first semester.

Before applying to Unitec I thought I would have to do a foundations course before attending, due to having left school a long time ago

Writing has never been my strong point especially as I left school to go to work when I was 15

I was ecstatic when I was accepted but because of my lack of writing ability was very nervous.

s

Diagnostic

Parts of the assessment could

be used in assessment 2

https://www.ricohidc.com/kb/planning-needs-to-be-done-firstly-to-get-success/

Quick

The Sport Culture class I found had a great structure for someone like me that couldn't put two sentences together.

Each step was about learning to structure, format and write the assignments we were handed and they built on the foundation of the previous one.

It also helped that the assignments started from being worth 10% to gradually moving up to 40% for the final one. Very different from the 3 other subjects that had 50% assignments due during or after mid semester break.

I highly doubt I would have achieved this much if it wasn’t for Sport Culture.

Student A continues

http://news.nwu.ac.za/considering-career-teaching-teach-south-africa-needs-you

To understand what is expected

https://basketball.knoji.com/how-to-properly-shoot-a-basketball/

To develop a culture of learning

About what the question is asking. Paragraph 2. Is it necessary to have a definition of sport? Explain why or why not?

Paragraph 4 and 5. • Outline and explain the two main influences on your participation in

sport and or physical activity

what the verbs mean• Definition activities• Finding examples in readings

How to write a paragraph• Checking in with what structures they have used in

schools

Teaching

..about what it might look like. An exemplar

• Anger is difficult to define precisely as it means different things to different people. What one person might describe as anger might be seen by some else as just a loud and booming voice. The reason that people see it differently is that the anger is a concept that is socially constructed. This means that different people understand anger differently depending on the environment they were brought up in. For example, a person brought up in a household where there was lots of shouting and loud voices might have a different view from a person who did not have many family members and had grown up in a much quieter household. If we were to define anger the Oxford dictionary defines it as “a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility”. A definition is often needed particularly in a court of law when it might be needed to clarify the state of mind of a person in a court case.

Teaching

• Sport has always been a part of my life growing up, so my view and understanding of what sport was had always been the same; a game, form of play or enjoyment, form of physical activity, played at any level of competence, under any form of organisation or rules. But as I learnt, I realised that there is no actual definition of sport. As Coakley (2003) suggests ‘there is no ‘pure essence’ or ‘pure nature’ of sport’ and that sport ‘has come to mean different things within different settings’. Coakley notes that many definitions of sport highlighted that sport is ‘institutionalised competitive activities that involve rigorous physical exertion or the use of relatively complex physical skills… motivated by a combination of personal enjoyment and external rewards’ (p.20). In contrast to my understanding, the definition given by Coakley highlights that definitions often include ‘rigorous exertion’ and ‘complex skills’, where as I did not think that all sport is executed in such a way. It is because of these similarities and differences that I came to define sport as I have, and understand that sport is defined differently in different situations.

How it will be markedTeaching

That is• Is understood by the student and

• supports and develops next step learning

Role and place of assessment

• Formative assessment refers to assessment that is specifically intended to generate feedback on performance to improve and accelerate learning (Sadler, 1998).

• A central argument is that, in higher education, formative assessment and feedback should be used to empower students as self-regulated learners. (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick 2006)

Issues with feedback

• 30% of students said that feedback supplied never helped them (Maclellan 2001)

• Feedback too vague, subject to interpretation or too subjective (Higgens 2000, Risdale 2000, Holmes and Smith 2003)

• Feedback passively recieved in absence of any tutor discussion (Fritz et al 2000)

Why we need a dialogue

If they haven’t done it in the paragraphs already – how will this comment help them to “learn how”

Trialed as a way of marking and giving more specific feedback in 2015 will be used for self assessment in 2016

1

Feedback as process

Students prompted and encouraged to reflect • Where could I improve?• How could I improve?• What skills do I need to develop further?• How can I apply what I have learnt to my next

assignment?

Next step learning• In text referencing • Good referencing sources• Quotes must support your main point or help to explain • Editing. Read your work to see if it makes sense. Think about

where to use full stops, question marks, capital letters• Reading and understanding the question

Sentence structure• Finish a sentence early – do not keep the sentence going by using

words like “also”• One sentence for a whole paragraph needs breaking into smaller

parts

Whole class feedback

Student next step learning plan2

Working out how they operate 3

Identifying those at risk and action to wrap support around them. Our academic hug

4

Last word to Student A

• I will be forever grateful for having being able to attend this class. It may seem like something so minor for some people but for people like me it is huge. I ended up with my first ever A (for the course) and A+ (for the final assignment. Yay.