The first year curriculum aids transition to higher education assessment and provides early feedback.

Good first year curriculum design aids students’ transition to higher education assessment, introduces a range of appropriate assessment practices and provides early feedback on student progress to students and staff. Assessment increases in complexity from first to later years.

For example:

• a Feedback Strategy (e.g., as at http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/lid/ltweb/84079.htm) could be developed and communicated;
• annotated examples of good, fair and poor performance of assessment criterion could be provided to students – the QUT Faculty of Education has an “assessment repository” full of examples for students (Healy, 2008 ALTC Kift Fellowship Case Study);
• a piece of writing could be “corrected” in large group class using the track changes function for immediate feedback (Healy, 2008 ALTC Kift Fellowship Case Study);
• the class, including the teacher, could produce a small piece of written work, swap it and mark it against criteria (Healy, 2008 ALTC Kift Fellowship Case Study);
• Taylor (2008) suggests in a first year maths subject that by Week 2 students could be required to have reflected on their previous maths experiences, confirm vital course information, and develop a study plan.

See: S. Kift. (2008). The next, great first year challenge: Sustaining, coordinating and embedding coherent institution–wide approaches to enact the FYE as “everybody’s business”. In 11th International Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference, An Apple for the Learner: Celebrating the First Year Experience, 2008, Hobart, 17. Retrieved August 14, 2008 from http://www.fyhe.com.au/past_papers/papers08/FYHE2008/content/pdfs/Keynote%20-%20Kift.pdf (pdf 280KB)