Wu, R; Dilena, M --- "Promoting feedback through second chance assessment: the Hong Kong experience" [2012] LegEdDig 2; (2012) 20(1) Legal Education Digest 5

• Promoting feedback through second chance assessment: the Hong Kong experience

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Promoting feedback through second chance assessment: the Hong Kong experience

R Wu and M Dilena

The Law Teacher, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2011, pp 181-193.

At its simplest, second chance assessment involves giving students a first assessment and then the opportunity to take the same or similar assessment again. Most of the existing literature suggests that the term ‘second chance assessment’ is synonymous with supplementary assessment, or resitting an examination, and is designed for students who have just managed to fail.

However, this narrow definition of second chance assessment has been broadened in two ways. First, it has been suggested that second chance assessment should be extended to more students than the few students who just failed to achieve a pass, and, second, that second chance assessment can be broadened to include not just the chance to re-sit an assessment, but also the chance to get feedback on the first (or interim) assessment and work on any deficiencies before taking a second chance assessment.

A curriculum guide for teachers of aboriginal students in Alberta takes the idea further and suggests that students should have the opportunity to practice skills before they have a second chance assessment.

Underpinning feedback is the notion of helping students to know why they have made mistakes and how they can avoid them in the future. Thus, whilst the term ‘feedback’ is commonly used and apparently understood, it may imply a backward-looking, or historical approach, rather than looking to the future. One of the main purposes of formative assessment (even in a predominantly summative setting) is to provide ‘feed-forward’ ... such an approach yields dividends, both for the student in terms of deeper understanding and improved performance and for the teacher in terms of evaluating and planning. It should, therefore, become the ultimate aim of the feedback.

Each of the above examples illustrates the notion that assessment can be assessment for learning as much as assessment of learning, a view endorsed by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education 2007, which recommended a strategy that ‘aims to improve the balance between assessment for and assessment of learning by interlinking the twin functions more directly, yet not confounding them’. The agency pointed out that when students receive a mark and comment well after their assessment they are likely to feel that ‘the feedback has passed its use-by date, with little or no relevance to the subsequent work they have now become engaged in’. It recommends a strategy whereby feedback is converted into ‘feed-forward’ – in which ‘comments on one task, draft or set of questions can be fed directly into a subsequent task or draft, or [can] aid preparation for an exam’.

Nicol and Draper similarly treat feedback as a springboard for learning that can be drawn on and used to facilitate future development. They also argue that the term ‘feed-forward’ is ‘a better way of describing comments addressed to the student in relation to work, even when such work has been awarded a final mark as in a summative assessment’.

Our view is that assessment of learning and assessment to enhance learning are quite compatible. In the elective course Property Transactions II in the Postgraduate Certificate in Law (PCLL) taken by law graduates at the University of Hong Kong, we have structured a form of assessment in which students: (1) take a first assessment; (2) receive a group feedback on areas in which they had done well or had difficulty; (3) receive a copy of the sample answer for the first assessment so that they can compare it with their own answer written for the assessment, and get individual feedback on their performance in the first assessment; (4) after a week, take a second assessment which draws on the same legal knowledge and skill but with a different fact pattern.

The experience of students in the above assessment is not unlike that of academics submitting a paper for publication, getting feedback from peer reviewers and submitting again. It is also similar to doctoral candidates submitting a draft thesis or dissertation, getting assessment and feedback from their supervisors and then resubmitting a revised version based on the advice received.

We have good reasons for using second chance assessment with the group of elite students who are already law graduates. In our Postgraduate Certificate in Law (PCLL) course, students are assessed largely on a pass/fail basis with distinctions given to the top ones. In this elective course, students are required to draft legal documents for property transactions like requisition letters and sale and purchase agreements similar to those that they would be expected to encounter in future legal practice.

Our second reason for implementing second chance assessment was that it is particularly appropriate in a university that is committed to the notion of assessment for learning as well as assessment of learning, and one required by the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong to develop outcomes based assessment by 2012.

The first assessment (on 3 May 2010) was an exercise which required students to write a requisition letter and draft a clause of a Sale and Purchase Agreement (the exercise was in fact the final examination paper of the previous year) in the morning under examination conditions, that is, students did the exercise in a closed venue and had to complete it within three and a half hours. Later that afternoon, when student answers had been collected, their tutors explained to them, in a small group session, by way of a sample answer (which was called the ‘pink sheet’ as it was printed on pink paper) the title requisitions they should have raised and a ‘sample’ clause they should have drafted. The tutors also asked students to spend the next day (4 May 2010) comparing their own answers with a ‘sample’ answer, that is, the pink sheet.

In the meantime, the papers were marked by the lecturers while the students had time to reflect on how well (or badly) they had done. Then in the afternoon of the next day (5 May 2010) and on 7 May, the lecturers met students for individual feedback sessions of 10 to 15 minutes to help them understand why their papers had been graded as: ‘Distinction’ (above 75%), or ‘Competent’ (50% to 74%) or ‘Not yet competent’ (below 50%) and what they needed to do to perform better in their second chance assessment (that is, the final examination). The second assessment provided a different set of title deeds but set the same task, namely, writing a requisition letter and drafting a clause in a Sale and Purchase Agreement.

Our research questions were answered by analysis of three sources of data: (1) a comparison of the student performance on the first and second assessments; (2) a comparison of 2009 and 2010 grade patterns; and (3) student feedback by way of email messages. We studied student performance in the first and second assessments, as well as grade patterns for 2009 and 2010, by undertaking a quantitative analysis of statistics, while we also analysed the data from student feedback by way of a qualitative analysis.

In the first assessment, no student out of the total of 46 students was given a ‘Distinction’. In the second chance assessment, six of the 46 students (about 13 per cent) scored above 75 and so gained ‘Distinction’, all improving on their grade over the first assessment.

When we compare the results of the first and second chance assessments, the most striking improvement is shown in the six students (13 per cent) who gained ‘Distinction’ for the first time. Improvement in the number of students who gained ‘Competent’ (37 to 39) was much less dramatic.

In the first assessment (3 May), students were required to peruse a set of title deeds for a unit in ‘Home-Ownership Scheme’ residential property. The requisitions that students were expected to raise involved missing government grants, a discrepancy in permitted user and intended user, a potential breach of deed of mutual covenant, an absence of allocation of undivided shares in the deed of mutual covenant, a missing assignment plan, signature discrepancies, wrongly dated documents, proof of authority to execute document on behalf of a corporation, the absence of legal opinion to confirm due execution in accordance with foreign laws, wrong property descriptions, proof of due execution, wrong identity document numbers, a missing power of attorney, and a missing statutory declaration to prove non-revocation of power of attorney. Apart from these requisitions that were of a more ‘general’ nature, students were required to raise a requisition ‘peculiar’ to this set of title deeds, namely, the removal of alienation restriction for the ‘Home-Ownership Scheme’ residential property.

In the second assessment (14 May), students were required to peruse a set of title deeds for a unit in a property with both residential and commercial users. The requisitions that students were expected to raise were missing government grants, a missing occupation permit, a missing common seal, a potential breach of deed of mutual covenant, a discrepancy in the building description, a missing intermediate root of title document, a wrong property description, undischarged Building Orders, a wrong government lease term, wrongly dated documents, a wrong party description, signature discrepancies, a proof of due execution by corporation, a missing assignment, and an undischarged mortgage. Apart from these requisitions that were of a more ‘general’ nature, students were required to raise a requisition ‘peculiar’ to this set of title deeds, namely, an architect certificate for sub-division or partition of property.

On the assumption that the students were reasonably competent property lawyers, the lecturers designated eight ‘knowledge points’ that essentially represented title requisitions that students could raise after perusal of a set of title deeds. These ‘knowledge points’ allowed the lecturers to compare the students’ performance in the first and second assessments, even though the assessments focused on two different property transactions.

In the 2009 final examination, one out of the 34 students was awarded a ‘Distinction’ grade for obtaining more than 75 per cent. The remaining 33 students were awarded a grade of ‘Competent’. No one was given a grade of ‘Not yet competent’. The overall average was 58.1 per cent.

In the 2010 final examination, which was in a similar format and with a similar level of difficulty, six of the 46 students were awarded ‘Distinction’; 39 of the students were awarded a grade of ‘Competent’; and one student was given a grade of ‘Not yet competent’. The overall average was 66.8 per cent.

Both the increase in the number of distinctions, from one in 2009 to six in 2010, and the increase in the average mark from 58.1 in 2009 to 66.8 in 2010 provide strong evidence that the student performance of 2010 was superior to that of 2009. We submit that the plausible explanation for the major difference between the two was that the 2010 assessment involved a new assessment practice, namely, a first assessment, feedback to students and then a second chance assessment.

A total of 26 students from a class of 46 took the trouble to respond by email to the following request:

What did you think of the idea of having a Second Chance Assessment (namely, the Final Examination today) after having a First Chance Assessment (namely, the All Day Exercise on 3 May, last Monday) and getting feedback on that afterwards?

The feedback that we received from students was overwhelmingly positive. For example, a word check on the total body of the responses revealed a total of 19 mentioning ‘useful’ or variations: ‘extremely useful’ (1), ‘very useful’ (7), ‘a lot useful’ (1), ‘quite useful’ (1), ‘really benefited us’ (1), and ‘useful’ (8). A similar check for the word ‘helpful’ and its variants revealed a total of 12 mentions. While it was possible that the 20 students who chose not to respond may have had a less enthusiastic view of their experience, those who did respond certainly demonstrated an enthusiastic endorsement with detailed explanation. For example, some of the respondents gave the feedback that having the first assessment allowed them to work out how they should manage their time when engaged in the second chance assessment under similar examination conditions. A check revealed that the word ‘time’, in phrases such as ‘time management’ or ‘limited period of time’ or ‘time allocation’ or ‘better control of time’ or ‘manage the time’, appeared 14 times.

Students were also grateful that they were afforded a first assessment that was taken under examination conditions, and so prepared them for the second chance assessment. There were at least 12 references to ‘exam conditions’, ‘exam approach’, ‘doing the exam in examination mode’, ‘exam setting’ and ‘get used to the in-hall examination atmosphere’.

Most students saw the first assessment as the real innovation because this trial attempt under examination conditions was a new experience for them. It seemed so useful that several recommended that it be used in other courses.

The final issue discerned in the student feedback was their appreciation of two kinds of ‘constructive feedback’ they received on their first assessment. After the first assessment, they received whole-group feedback on the areas in which the class had done well or had difficulty. Then, after having time to compare their answer to the first assessment with a ‘sample’ answer, they were given individual feedback on what they did in the first assessment.

However, two of the 26 students who emailed responses felt that the first, whole-class review session with students on the day of the first assessment was sufficient, and that the follow-up individual feedback sessions were not really necessary.

Our implementation of ‘second chance assessment’ represented the second of two attempts to try out what for us are innovative approaches to assessing law students, with our first attempt involving the adoption of reflective learning logs. This second attempt, namely, second chance assessment, revealed not only an improvement in examination performance from 2009 to 2010, but also a set of remarkably enthusiastic feedback from 26 students out of a class of 46 students. Every student who responded was positive about the use of second chance assessment. Criticism was limited to the suggestion (from two students) that the individual feedback session might not have been necessary and to suggestions of minor changes that might make the system more efficient.

Our students seemed to appreciate not so much that they had been given a second chance assessment, but that they had been given a first one. Many of them talked about the innovation being the ‘first chance’, particularly as it was taken under examination conditions. It seemed as if the introduction of the first assessment and feedback alleviated, if not completely removed, the uncertainties and anxieties of the examination process. One possible explanation for this was that some students perceived the format of ‘traditional’ examination as a barrier to demonstrating their competence, or that it was designed in such a way that deliberately tricks them into failure.

What is more, several students revealed that getting feedback from their previous examinations (or ‘feed-forward’) had not been part of their experience.

At least since Hattie reviewed 87 meta-analyses of studies on factors influencing student results, we have known that feedback on performance is one of the strongest influences on student performance. Despite this and despite a wealth of literature on the value of ‘feed-forward’, it appears that law students both in Hong Kong and in other common law jurisdictions have been denied the opportunity to demonstrate their competence in traditional examination format. However, it appears now we can give some help to law students to succeed in examinations by way of ‘feed-forward’ through the implementation of second chance assessment.

In retrospect, we consider second chance assessment has been successful in helping our students to learn from their mistakes and work out what they need to do to succeed in examinations as well as their future legal practice.

Such new assessment practice has also enabled them to engage in serious understanding of professional legal knowledge and application of professional legal skills. The success of such new assessment practice cannot be better demonstrated than by the following email messages from our students:

It is very thoughtful for the teachers to give us an opportunity of ‘warm-up’ exercise before the real one, and I truly appreciate all what you have done for us.

The 1st Chance assessment, arranged around one week before the 2nd Chance assessment, also serves as a ‘last minute’ warning and a chance of self-review. I can sense that it forms the last perfect touch of the whole course design (apart from the final exam) which aims at helping the students polish their practical (conveyancing) skills on a regular and continuous manner.

Another positive feature is that each student enjoys and is guaranteed tutor’s comment and another individual review session. I think all these logistics and arrangements are really considerate and thoughtful, which greatly strengthen the students’ confidence. They can feel that all teachers are very understanding and responsible.

We believe that in moving from ‘assessment of learning’ to ‘assessment for learning’, and from ‘giving feedback’ to ‘giving feed-forward’, our implementation of second chance assessment has represented a milestone development of assessment reform in Hong Kong legal education. To the best of our knowledge, there is no literature showing the adoption of similar second chance assessment in law courses in Hong Kong or in other common law jurisdictions. It is our hope that this study can generate further research and debate on innovative assessment practices not only in Hong Kong but also in the rest of the common law world.