JISC

Summary

FASTECH is designed to use readily available technologies to support the systemic enhancement of assessment and feedback strategies and practices at programme, faculty and institutional levels. A key aim is to provide evidence of, and guidelines for, technological improvements and change processes that can be used to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of assessment and feedback at these levels throughout the sector. By welcoming engagements, developing our work with, and inviting contributions from members of the HE community throughout the project, we aim to build a strong community of practice, focussed upon developing understanding of how to improve assessment and feedback practices and environments.

By addressing the challenges of improving practices through research and development within particular degree programmes, we are able to work with the grain of teachers’ subject interests, disciplinary needs and traditions, and departmental loyalties, and to address the full course experiences of students. So teachers and students play a key role in deciding how and what technologies should be employed. This enables us to support changes that are recognised as being of real benefit to staff, and are highly prized by students. By demonstrating the effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of technology-supported learning and teaching practices within many kind of programmes and learning environments, we are able to engineer systemic quality enhancements at departmental and institutional levels.

Our project builds upon a new body of knowledge about staff and student experiences of assessment and feedback, collected from over 22 degree programmes in 8 universities. From this baseline data we have identified many common and distinctive disciplinary challenges facing students and their teachers. We are building upon this work. For further information about the context of our project, please see the ‘Transforming the Student Experience Through Assessment website: www.testa.ac.uk 

Objectives

Internally: 

• To embed technology supported improvements to assessment and feedback practices in 33 degree programmes across the range of educational provision at Bath Spa and Winchester universities;
• To undertake research, primarily with 13 degree programmes, that will provide evidence of the nature and effects of changes made due to the use of technologies within whole degree programmes;
• To promote the systemic development of institutional quality assurance and enhancement strategies and processes through staff and senior management engagements with the activities and findings of FASTECH;
• To undertake research to track the time and kind of activities that teachers and students undertake within their assessment and feedback practices, how volumes and patterns of work change due the use of technologies, and the effects of these changes upon pedagogies and assessment environment;

Externally:

• To invite and support sector-wide engagement with our work, and in the creation of materials and evidence that will support the enhancement of assessment and feedback practices throughout the sector;
• To provide a suite of easily usable and adaptable, digital media resources to enable teachers, managers and developers to learn how practices may be enhanced through the use of readily-available technologies;
• To provide guidance through case studies of change about how to embed technological innovations about assessment and feedback within whole degree programmes;
• To provide online and face-to-face support for teachers and others in the use of the findings, tools and methods of FASTECH to review and improve their own practices;
• To provide open access to the tools, methods and findings of research on the effects of technology-supported changes on staff and student workloads; and
• To contribute to the attainment of the goals of JISC’s ‘Assessment and Feedback’ Programme.

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

• 13 degree programme reports
• 20 programme case-studies
• 13 student programme reports
• 1 user manual
• 1 Quality Assurance guide
• 1 technology-in-use guide
• 1 report on workload tracking
• 4 JISC progress reports
• 2 JISC evaluation reports
• Other website assets
• Understanding and expertise
• Communities of Practice
• Conference Papers and Publications