Assessment is a critical aspect of higher education because it has a range of powerful impacts on what staff and students do and how universities operate. Underpinned by relevant theory and practical advice this fully updated new edition takes into account the changing expectation of students in the context of an increasingly complex and shifting higher education environment to promote the role of formative assessment and formative feedback and its impact on shaping the student learning experience. Presented through the lens of contemporary perspectives, empirical evidence, and case studies across a broad range of subject disciplines, this new edition aims to encourage teaching and support staff to focus on the promotion of student learning through designing and embedding high-impact formative assessment processes and activities. Key content covers: the theoretical and philosophical aspects of formative assessment and formative feedback; the learning environment in which students undertake their learning activities, helping teachers develop appropriate formative assessment and provide effective formative feedback; the impact of formative assessment and formative feedback activities have on learning, teaching, and assessment design, as well as on the academic workload of tutors; the contemporary issues and challenges currently driving research into formative assessment; the use of technology in formative assessment and how different tools and technologies allow for the provision of effective and efficient formative feedback; the benefits of understanding how students respond to formative assessment and formative feedback as an opportunity to review the effectiveness of the teaching and learning methods and techniques; the integral role of formative assessment and formative feedback plays in postgraduate research settings; and how innovations in formative assessment and feedback inform key developments in large-scale assessment change. Aimed at both experienced and early career practitioners in higher education, this text is ideal reading for educators who wish to see a movement away from a higher education system driven by summative assessment to one where a more holistic approach to education positions learning standards rather than measurement and grades as central to effective assessment and, crucially, to return to a focus on student learners.

Although the field of child and adolescent development seems to be an easy one in which to provide active learning opportunities to students, few textbooks currently exist that actually do this.

This book represents the emerging efforts of a growing international network of researchers and practitioners to promote the development and uptake of evidence-based pedagogies in higher education, at something a level approaching large-scale impact. By offering a communication venue that attracts and enhances much needed partnerships among practitioners and researchers in pedagogical innovation, we aim to change the conversation and focus on how we work and learn together – i.e. extending the implementation and knowledge of co–design methods. In this first edition of our Research Topic on Active Learning, we highlight two (of the three) types of publications we wish to promote. First are studies aimed at understanding the pedagogical designs developed by practitioners in their own practices by bringing to bear the theoretical lenses developed and tested in the education research community. These types of studies constitute the "practice pull" that we see as a necessary counterbalance to "knowledge push" in a more productive pedagogical innovation ecosystem based on research-practitioner partnerships. Second are studies empirically examining the implementations of evidence-based designs in naturalistic settings and under naturalistic conditions. Interestingly, the teams conducting these studies are already exemplars of partnerships between researchers and practitioners who are uniquely positioned as “in-betweens” straddling the two worlds. As a result, these publications represent both the rigours of research and the pragmatism of reflective practice. In forthcoming editions, we will add to this collection a third type of publication -- design profiles. These will present practitioner-developed pedagogical designs at varying levels of abstraction to be held to scrutiny amongst practitioners, instructional designers and researchers alike. We hope by bringing these types of studies together in an open access format that we may contribute to the development of new forms of practitioner-researcher interactions that promote co-design in pedagogical innovation.