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Audits of 23 degree programmes in eight universities showed wide variations in assessment patterns and feedback. Scores from Assessment Experience Questionnaire returns revealed consistent relationships between characteristics of assessment and student learning responses, including a strong relationship between quantity and quality of feedback and a clear sense of goals and standards, and between both these scales and students' overall satisfaction. Focus group data helped to explain students' learning responses but also identified ambivalent responses to the use of formative-only assessment, particularly when it was optional. Frequently, students were unclear about goals and standards, and found feedback unhelpful when assessment demands differed across modules, and when marking standards and approaches varied widely, making it difficult for feedback to feed forwards. The methodology underpinning the Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment study described here has been used in more than 20 universities worldwide and is helping teachers to redesign assessment regimes, so that teachers' efforts support learning better.

There is considerable variation between male and female Bachelor degree performance at Oxford and Cambridge (Oxbridge) where male students attain more First and Third Class degrees and female students attain more Second Class degrees. Various hypotheses have been put forward to explain this phenomenon including the possibility that the distinctive Oxbridge assessment environment, very different from those at both pre- and post-92 universities, might account for the difference. Data from the Assessment Experience Questionnaire (AEQ; Oxbridge, pre- and post-92 universities, one science, one humanities and one applied social science subject from each) were analysed to determine gendered perceptions of the assessment environment. Significant gender differences were found on five AEQ scales ("Quantity of effort", "Coverage of syllabus", "Quantity and quality of feedback", "Use of feedback" and "Appropriate assessment") but there was no significant interaction between gender and university. Consequently, there were few clues in students' responses to confirm that the Oxbridge assessment environment explains gendered differences in degree performance. (Contains 1 note, 4 tables, and 1 figure.)

This article outlines a methodology for characterising features of programme-level assessment environments so that the relationship between features of the assessment environment and students' learning response can be studied. The methodology was developed through the detailed case study of nine undergraduate degree programmes: one in each of three contrasting discipline areas in each of three contrasting universities. Each case study involved examination of course documentation, interviews with academics and interviews with students, following which each degree programme was coded in relation to a range of features of the assessment environment, such as the proportion of marks derived from examinations and the volume and timeliness of feedback on assignments. Programmes were found to differ profoundly in terms of variables that are known to have implications for student-learning processes. They also differed widely in the extent to which they illustrated the application of conventional wisdom about curriculum design, embodied in national quality assurance guidelines and the Bologna Agreement. Programmes were found to have either a high volume of summative assessment or a high volume of formative-only assessment, but never both at the same time. Programmes also differed in the mechanisms used to make goals and standards clear, having either highly explicit curriculum design or high volumes of written and oral feedback, but never both at the same time. The findings suggest that there are distinctive programme-level assessment environments that operate in quite different ways despite all programmes studied being subject to the same quality assurance code of practice. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)

Developed and evaluated a measure of higher education teachers' repertoire of teaching methods, the Teaching Methods Inventory (TMI). Found that the TMI was not a useful indicator of repertoire (or that repertoire was not a very useful indicator of teaching quality) because of poor correlations with the Approaches to Teaching Inventory and the Student Evaluation of Education Quality questionnaire. (EV)

The Student Evaluation of Educational Quality Questionnaire (SEEQ) is one of the most thoroughly developed and widely used student feedback questionnaires in the United States with a robust factor structure, excellent reliability, and reasonable validity. This study examined use of the SEEQ with 1,297 students in nine institutions in the United Kingdom. Factor analysis largely confirmed the factor structure. (EV)

Audits of 23 degree programmes in eight universities showed wide variations in assessment patterns and feedback. Scores from Assessment Experience Questionnaire returns revealed consistent relationships between characteristics of assessment and student learning responses, including a strong relationship between quantity and quality of feedback and a clear sense of goals and standards, and between both these scales and students’ overall satisfaction. Focus group data helped to explain students’ learning responses but also identified ambivalent responses to the use of formative-only assessment, particularly when it was optional. Frequently, students were unclear about goals and standards, and found feedback unhelpful when assessment demands differed across modules, and when marking standards and approaches varied widely, making it difficult for feedback to feed forwards. The methodology underpinning the Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment study described here has been used in more than 20 universities worldwide and is helping teachers to redesign assessment regimes, so that teachers’ efforts support learning better. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]