Assessing learning and exchanging feedback

Contextual Background: 

As a lecturer in Fashion Contour BA, I have noticed that students feel under pressure to achieve top grades. The ability to take grades as feedback is surpassed by the tendency to seeing grades as personal value or judgment, which in turn causes students to lose confidence in their own ability or to reject the constructive criticism, taking it as a personal attack, which undermines the relationship between tutor and student.

Evaluation

In my experience, this phenomenon is particularly common with year 2 students. The step up in learning outcomes, the need to manage two concurrent deadlines, and a false sense of security derived from a relatively easier year 1, often cause students to misjudge the need for personal contribution to their own learning, which results in lower grades. This is common for students who received all levels of grades in year 1.

High achievers may become complacent, others may struggle to up what was already a lacklustre performance, slipping into unsatisfactory results, even when they have the potential to do better.

The impact on the student confidence is detrimental, as they focus on their “bad grades”, rather than the feedback, as a measure of their self worth. (Marcus et al, 2020)

Moving forwards

Some steps that we have already implemented as a team, but are yet to see if they give the desired results, are:

• discussing the issue openly with students
• dedicate extra time to set out the requirements clearly in Scheme of Work, Checklists and Make the grade sessions
• introduce an additional formative assessment session

Whilst these may sound logical steps, I have a theory that more of the same would give the same results.

Discussing with the students is certainly an honest approach that makes them feel involved, but it may not tap into their consciousness until they experience it.

Scheme of Work and Checklist have proven to be a double edge sword: students love the clarity, but they take it as a to do list. They don’t always complete it and don’t appreciate it is a minimum requirement, and not an exhaustive list.

The additional formative assessment session may be more productive, as they usually receive feedback at toile crit, which is a mixture of design and technical, but mostly focused on Process and Realisation and does not touch onto the sketchbook or rationale component of the summative assessment. The additional session, focused on design selection, would relate more to those aspect and address Enquiry, Knowledge and communication. (UAL, 2025)

The formative assessment sessions are also well attended, though not fully, which gives an opportunity to reach more students.

My concerns though centre on the student focus. Whilst we try and keep feedback positive (at least partly) and encouraging, not to undermine confidence, it doesn’t always communicate to the student at what level their work sits. I feel it would be more productive to give a predicted grade, based on the work so far. The idea is that we get their attention by “speaking their language” and then elaborate with feedback and guidance.

Unfortunately, there are implications that may stop this approach.

The final grades are Internally Moderated, and this would not be possible in a formative assessment setting. The risk is that any reduction in grade would leave the students feeling misguided.

Also discussing grades openly in front of other students may feel humiliating, but done privately (for example by email) following the session would not attract their attention at the right time to for the feedback.

Lastly any attempt to get students to grade each other in feedback sessions so far resulted in very kind As and Bs, which are not realistics.

Marcus and Tomasi (2020) suggest that a more nurturing approach and cultural shift can be beneficial to the students emotional response. So one way to manage the impact of grades could be to also informally assess other criteria, which may improve their readiness and motivation for performance: for example comment on their creativity, their openness to explore, their commitment to support their peers, and boost their natural attitudes that can positively impact of performance, as assessed in the marking criteria. This may be effective if done as a peer review.

Reflecting on these themes has prompted me to value the importance of an open relationship between tutor and students, and how important it is to nurture the student personality as much as their accademic skills.

Resources

Marcus M. Tomasi D. (2020) ‘Emotional and Cognitive Responses to Academic Performance and Grade Anxiety’. Journal of Medical Research and Health Sciences. 919-925

University of the Arts London (2025) Assessment. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/course-regulations/assessment (Accessed: 18 January 2025)