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. 

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About Us

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Julia Smith

Co-Founder
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Joe Williams

Lead Developer
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Anna Cruise

UX & UI Designer
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Thomas Davis

Graphic Designer

Team

TESTA Project Team

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Professor Tansy Jessop

University of Bristol

Tansy is PVC Education at University of Bristol. She has led the TESTA project since 2009. Tansy has been instrumental in spreading TESTA to universities in the UK, Australia and India. She has research interests in assessment, social justice, and qualitative methods, particularly narrative and case study research.

 
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Yaz El-Hakim

SEDA and Refme

Yaz was formerly Director of Student Engagement at the University of Winchester, and co-led the TESTA project. His background is in Sports Psychology. He remains involved in developing TESTA in his role as SEDA Co-chair.

 
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Professor Graham Gibbs

Independent Consultant

Graham was previously Director of the Oxford Learning Institute at the University of Oxford. He has acted as a consultant to about 160 universities world-wide, having published more than 400 articles and 20 books. He worked with Tansy and Yaz to develop the TESTA project and spread its findings and methodology. He has retired from formal work but keeps in touch with TESTA developments.

 
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Juliet Williams

Winchester

Juliet is Research Officer for TESTA at the University of Winchester, joining the TESTA team in August 2015. She works closely with students and Programme Leaders at the University in collecting and analysing data using the TESTA approach. Juliet is also currently studying for her PhD and has research interests in American postfeminist popular culture and African American experience.

 
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Juliet Williams
27 September 2015
​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...
Tansy Jessop
07 September 2015
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...
Tansy Jessop
07 September 2015
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...