Formative Assessment and Feedback in Post-Digital Learning Environments

Set against the backdrop of unprecedented challenge and sector uncertainty in higher education, digital skills and education technology are fundamental to the evolution of a dynamic and relevant learning environment for universities. When we consider this in the more defined arena of higher education assessment and feedback, it becomes clear there is considerable work that is still needed to fully grasp and understand the wide-ranging pedagogic affordances of available digital learning tools and technologies for assessment design. A post-digital framing of university assessment places particular significance on the relations among the formative ‘in-process’ interactions and material arrangements in particular environments and forms of knowing (including related knowledge artefacts, i.e., assignments) generated from these. From this perspective, student assessment experience is emergent and encapsulates a mutual shaping of technology, teaching methods, and contexts which are, in practice, always negotiated between educators, learners and their environments. A post-digital view of assessment is considered a useful lens to help us examine the wide-ranging practices associated with formative assessment and feedback that incorporate combinations of digital and material approaches and activities.

The purpose of this symposium is two-fold: first, it marks the formal launch of the recently published edited book by Professor Sam Elkington (Teesside University) and Professor Alastair Irons (Abertay University) entitled Formative Assessment and Feedback in Post-Digital Learning Environments: Disciplinary Case Studies in Higher Education (Taylor and Francis, 2025). Second, it provides a forum in which to explore and interrogate the changing patterns of assessment in higher education including the diversification of practice, and the use of digital software, tools, and devices, that supplements and mediates meaningful relationships between learners and teachers. Through a focus on formative processes, we are most interested in understanding the impact of digital technology on our changing educational environments and how as educators we might approach the concepts of assessment and feedback to effectively and with confidence move university assessment forward in ways that prepare students for a multitude of future possibilities.

Together with the views of the book’s editors, we will hear the perspectives of several of the authors who contributed practice case studies to the collection. As part of a facilitated discussion, these authors will share and consider a variety of practicable knowledge and insights into the rich digital, social, and material nature of formative assessment practice and the complex processes it involves. In doing so our aim is to draw to the fore the relevance of the particularities of formative processes and their capacity to reflect, and in many ways enrich, the human experience of learning within post-digital learning environments. This is crucial to the present moment in higher education globally as universities engage in reimagining how the significant resources devoted to assessment and feedback might be reconfigured for digital and physical learning environments to better support student learning across different modes of delivery. This opens up all manner of timely considerations as to the paths that a post-digital framing of formative assessment might follow. For example: should the emphasis be placed at the personal or social level, and in formal educational spaces or beyond? What are the significant features of our changing educational contexts in which formative assessment must be worked out? And what might be the critical digital, social, and material elements in this working out? What room might there be for imaginative and creative thinking and design in shaping relevant and meaningful formative processes?

Symposium participants will be encouraged to engage with these and other emerging ideas and questions, as well as share their own practice insights and exemplars. Facilitated via a hybrid collaborative approach, the hope is that the event will provide a resource which practitioners – both in-person and online – can engage with as a reference point for thinking and talking about appropriately future facing assessments at a time when more nuanced, flexible, and responsive assessment approaches are being called for.

Speakers & bios

Professor Sam Elkington (Teesside University)

Prof. Paul Fleet (Newcastle University)

Professor Alastair Irons (Abertay University)Dr. Alison McMaster (Sunderland University)
Dr. David Anthony Parkinson (Northumbria University, Newcastle)
Michael Edward Parker (Northumbria University, Newcastle)

Dr. Samantha Gooneratne (Teesside University)

Please select the “online” ticket if you wish to join the symposium portion of the event virtually.

Symposium

Room T1.10, the Curve Building

14.00-14.10

Welcome and introductions.

Dr. Nicola Watchman-Smith (Director of Student Learning and Academic Registry).

14.10-14.40

An overview of Formative Assessment and Feedback in Post-Digital Learning Environments

Prof Sam Elkington and Prof Alistair Irons

14.40-15.40

Panel discussion including a collection of case study authors providing disciplinary practice perspectives on formative assessment and feedback in different learning environments.

Meet our panel members:

Prof. Paul Fleet (Newcastle University) - Author of Chapter 3 ‘Creating a formative-feedback trialogue by embedding an e-learning theory package into undergraduate music education’.

Dr. Alison McMaster (University of Sunderland) - Author of Chapter 8 ‘Conversations in Context: Reframing Assessment for International Trainee Teachers’.

Dr. David Anthony Parkinson (Northumbria University, Newcastle) and Michael Edward Parker (Northumbria University, Newcastle) - Authors of Chapter 11 ‘An online peer assessment tool for embedding authentic feedback literacy in students studying creative subjects’.

Dr. Samantha Gooneratne (Teesside University) - Author of Chapter 21 ‘Embedding Formative Feedback through Differentiated Instruction using Microsoft OneNote Class Notebooks’.

15:50 – 16:00

Q&A and plenary discussion around emergent ideas and themes and next steps for formative assessment and feedback in a changing higher education sector.

16:00 – 17:30

The Exhibition Space, Level 1 - The Library

In person participants move to the Exhibition Space on the ground floor of the Campus Library Building for the book launch reception and refreshments.