TESTA plus: more ways to involve undergraduates in assessment and feedback design

This paper presents the results of a pilot undertaken at the University of Brighton which explores new methods of including students in assessment and feedback design. A team from the Centre for Learning and Teaching worked with staff and students from an undergraduate BSc course to expand the TESTA method (Jessop, el-Hakim, Gibbs 2011) to incorporate three extra activities. These were the identification of a group of key assessment and feedback events, a card organisation activity that was used with students in focus groups, and a multiple choice questionnaire presented to a whole year cohort. These activities generated a rich set of data around student involvement in feedback design and the role of emotion in assessment and feedback. The paper explores these methods, discusses their strengths and weaknesses as an extension to TESTA, and makes suggestions for how the different aspects of the project can contribute to institutional course development.