A distinction is often made in the literature about "assessment of learning" and "assessment for learning" attributing a formative function to the latter while the former takes a summative function.While there may be disagreements among researchers and educators about such categorical distinctions there is consensus that both types of assessment are often used concurrently in higher education institutions. A question that often arises when formative and summative assessment practices are used in continuous assessment is the extent to which student learning can be facilitated through feedback.The views and perceptions of students and academics from a discipline in the Humanities across seven higher education institutions were sought to examine the above question. A postal survey was completed by academics, along with a survey administered to a sample of undergraduate students and a semi-structured interview was conducted with key academics in each of the seven institutions. This comparative study highlights issues that concern both groups about the extent to which continuous assessment practices facilitate student learning and the challenges faced. The findings illustrate the need to consider more effective and efficient ways in which feedback can be better used to facilitate student learning.

Formative assessment and personalised feedback are commonly recognised as key factors both for improving students' performance and increasing their motivation and engagement (Gibbs and Simpson, 2005). Currently, in large and massive open online courses (MOOCs), technological solutions to give feedback are often limited to quizzes of different kinds. At present, one of our challenges is to provide feedback for open-ended questions through semantic technologies in a sustainable way.To face such a challenge, our academic team decided to use a test based on latent semantic analysis (LSA) and chose an automatic assessment tool named G-Rubric. G-Rubric was developed by researchers at the Developmental and Educational Psychology Department of UNED (Spanish national distance education university). By using G-Rubric, automated formative and iterative feedback was provided to students for different types of open-ended questions (70-800 words). This feedback allowed students to improve their answers and writing skills, thus contributing both to a better grasp of concepts and to the building of knowledge.In this paper, we present the promising results of our first experiences with UNED business degree students along three academic courses (2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17). These experiences show to what extent assessment software such as G-Rubric is mature enough to be used with students. It offers them enriched and personalised feedback that proved entirely satisfactory. Furthermore, G-Rubric could help to deal with the problems related to manual grading, even though our final goal is not to replace tutors by semantic tools, but to give support to tutors who are grading assignments.

This is an electronic version of an article published in Teaching in Higher Education, Volume 15, Issue 6 December 2010 , pages 675 -689, which is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2010.507301 This is an electronic version of an article published in Teaching inHigher Education, Volume 15, Issue 6 December 2010 , pages 675 -689, which is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2010.507301 2 AbstractWithin modular degrees it is sometimes possible for students to broaden their education by taking modules from outside their main programme of study. This is one significant aspect of modular degrees which has not been studied. In an effort to better understand this issue, the research reported in this paper explored the experiences (a) of students taking modules from outside their programme of study and (b) of staff teaching modules with significant numbers of students from other programmes. In total, 820 undergraduate students responded to an on-line survey; 12 academic staff members participated in interviews. The survey focused on students" reasons for choosing the module, their experiences of assessment and their perceptions of workload. Interviews with academic staff focused on the influence of non-programme students on teaching and assessment practices. The discussion addresses the implications of student choice and classroom diversity for teaching and assessment in modular systems. This is an electronic version of an article published in Teaching in Higher Education, Volume 15, Issue 6 December 2010 , pages 675 -689, which is available online at: http://dx

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