Assessment, marking and feedback: understanding the lecturers’ perspective

This study is part of a larger research project originally funded by the Write Now CETL looking at assessment, marking and feedback from the lecturers’ perspective. Earlier findings have suggested that with new lecturers at least, there are some discipline differences in how able they feel they can put into practice what they have learned about assessment pedagogy on their PGCert courses. To further explore these differences with experienced lecturers, we have designed a more general tool called the Assessment, Marking and Feedback Inventory (AMFI). This was completed by 45 lecturers from a single UK university. Findings suggest that lecturers feel that one of the barriers to good assessment and feedback practice is time and workload. There were also some indications of discipline differences, with lecturers from ‘hard’ applied disciplines feeling this more strongly than those from the ‘soft’ disciplines. In a second stage of the development of the AMFI, the feedback section was refined and used in a survey of 53 academics in hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism. Findings showed broadly similar patterns with the original data, although the items related to how best to give feedback (face to face, in groups) provoked the highest rate of uncertain responses, suggesting further refinement is needed