Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment

About TESTA

TESTA is a joint National Teaching Fellowship Project with four partner universities of similar character: Bath Spa, Chichester, Winchester and Worcester. It is funded by the Higher Education Academy for three years (2009-2012). TESTA aims to improve the quality of student learning through addressing programme-level assessment. TESTA is a £200,000 National Teaching Fellowship project on programme assessment, funded by the Higher Education Academy, led by the University of Winchester (2009-2012). TESTA originally conducted research on eight programmes in four partner universities to map assessment environments, develop interventions and evaluate them. The TESTA approach has been used with more than 100 programmes in over 40 UK universities, and in Australia, India and the USA. TESTA works with academics, students and managers - and for students, academics and managers – to identify study behaviour, generate assessment patterns to foster deeper learning across whole programmes, and debunk regulatory myths which prevent assessment for learning. 

Site Content

Workshops

TESTA Methodology Workshop Packages

Please consult Dr Tansy Jessop or Yaz El Hakim by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like to arrange a full training workshop on the TESTA methodology. The normal cost of a day long workshop by one member of the team is £600. The training has been run successfully at the University of New South Wales, Australia, Liverpool John Moores, Roehampton University, and Ediburgh University. Seven UK universities underwent training in the TESTA approach during the HEA Change academy programme on Assessment and Feedback in 2012. You can download an indicative programme on TESTA>Resources>Research Toolkit. The hyperlink is http://www.testa.ac.uk/resources/research-toolkit

TESTA Summit, Woburn House, London: 16 Sept 2013
 21 universities were represented at the TESTA summit, hosted by SEDA, and sponsored by the University of Winchester and the Higher Education Academy. Among those represented were academics and PhD students from two Indian universities, Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, and Saurashtra University in Gujarat, and keynote speaker, Professor Sean Brawley from UNSW in Australia. Presenters from the University of Birmingham, Keele Univerasity and University College London shared their approaches to using TESTA. Steve Ouram, Academic Lead for the HEA Change Academy, and Dr Erica Morris, Academic Lead for Assessment and Feedback at the HEA gave helpful overviews. The day closed with an interactive Global Cafe session to discuss key issues, challenges and common themes in using TESTA to develop programme-wide approaches. TESTA Summit Programmme Participants

SEDA Workshop: Woburn House, London: 27 Oct 2010

Professor Graham Gibbs led a workshop for SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) on the TESTA methodology at Woburn House on October 27th 2010. Carol Smith, Programme Director of American Studies at Winchester contributed to the workshop from her programme leadership perspective of being part of the TESTA project at Winchester.

http://www.seda.ac.uk/?p=14_2&e=413

Power point presentations: http://www.testa.ac.uk/resources/best-practice-guides

 

 

 

 

Contact Us

The University of Winchester Sparkford Road Winchester SO22 4NR Tel: +44 (0)1962 841515 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Dissemination

Links

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) funded two National Teaching Fellowship (NTFS) projects on programme assessment in the 2009-2012 round of funding. The TESTA team is working with the Programme Assessment Strategies (PASS) project at Bradford on common aspects of programme level assessment. There are several HEA funded Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) which major in assessment, including the Assessment Standards Knowledge Exchange (ASKe) CETL based at Oxford Brookes. The University of Edinburgh has a fantastic site looking at ways of enhancing feedback.

Hyperlinks

Assessment Standards Knowledge Exchange(ASKe) CETL, Oxford Brookes University:
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/aske/

Programme Assessment Strategies(PASS) project, Bradford University:
http://www.pass.brad.ac.uk/

Enhancing Feedback, University of Edinburgh
http://www.tla.ed.ac.uk/feedback/index.html

Re-engineering Assessment Practice (REAP) University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
http://www.reap.ac.uk/

 

Juliet Williams
27 September 2015
TESTA in Periodic Review?
​With the start of the new academic year come the inevitable beginnings of the periodic review process, with the validation and re-validation of programmes at the University of Winchester approaching rather more swiftly than we ever anticipate at thi...
Read More
Tansy Jessop
07 September 2015
Ten ways to get it back in ten days
Graham Gibbs' throw-away line "If feedback is not back in ten days, it's not worth doing" is controversial and irritating to academics - if - and here's the big if - they carry on doing assessment and feedback in the same way. If it's a case of turni...
Read More
Tansy Jessop
07 September 2015
Getting more for less?
You gets what you pays for...The Higher Education Academy has launched a seminar series with a strand on "getting more for less" in its upcoming Assessment and Feedback series. "Getting more for less" is quite a catchy title in a Higher Education sys...
Read More