The assessment framework deconstructed

The assessment framework has been reduced to a checklist constituted by a series of prompts in the form of checkboxes. The quality of an assessment task is measured against these criteria; a judgement which is undertaken (whenever possible) in conjunction with an analysis of student feedback elicited as to their perception of the efficacy of the particular item of assessment. Examples of this process are available on the Faculty website (2000-2001). Those checkboxes, together with some minimal explanation (Nulty & Kift, 2003), are as follows:

• Is the assessment method valid? Does it actually assess what it purports to assess? Can it be used to discover whether students have achieved the learning outcomes identified for the subject studied and does it allow students to demonstrate those achievements?

• Is the assessment method reliable? Would the marking of the task give the same result no matter who did it? Would it give the same mark if the marking was repeated at a later date? Could a third party make some external verification of the mark awarded?

• Particularly, this relates to transparency in assessment practice and fairness (referred to above and also discussed further below). Students need to be able to determine for themselves what characterizes high quality work - if they can't do this for themselves how will they work as autonomous professionals once they graduate? (Boud & Falchikov, 2005) Therefore, the encouragement to staff here is to be open about the assessment criteria used and the performance standards relevant to each criterion. This helps learners to learn for themselves - not only now but into their future. It also helps teachers in their learning design because they can be clearer about what they are trying to achieve.

Issues here include:

➣ Are there clear and appropriate marking criteria which will be consistently applied? (Bone, 1999).

➣ Is there consistency of criteria in the assessment of this skill across units?

➣ Do the performance standards under the criteria provide an adequate basis for discriminating between different categories of attainment? (Price & Rust, 2004)

• Is the assessment fair? (Related to reliability and transparency in assessment practice). Students are very quick to judge fairness or otherwise as a sort of intuitive Gestalt. Teachers should be particularly careful about the use of a grading curve which can be seen to be unfair if it allows people to get high grades for relatively poor work, or low grades for good work (cf true criterion referenced assessment) (James, 2002).

• Is the assessment unambiguous in its intention? The relationship between the assessment and the desired learning outcome should be obvious to the students: that is, learners should be able to see the relevance and purpose of each assessment activity. If this is the case, then students should be able to engage with the activity in a self-directed and purposeful manner and will find it easier to be motivated about the task. Good performers should have the opportunity to be (and be rewarded for being) creative in their thinking and drawing in associations from other areas of their knowledge and skill because they can actively hypothesize about inter-relationships.

• Is the assessment authentic? As closely as possible, assessment tasks should resemble tasks that students would encounter in a genuine work or life setting (rather than an artificial academic one). Such authentic assessments are usually more inherently interesting, engaging and motivational by virtue of their connection to the students' graduate workplace (the relevance of which should be made transparent).

• A sub-dimension here is to give some consideration to differences in cultural and social backgrounds and to personal and professional aspirations: what is relevant, interesting and engaging to one learner is not necessarily so to another.

• Does the assessment method help students to develop in the area being assessed? Active assessment processes should aspire to the notion assessment as-learning, or for "educational improvement" (AAHE Assessment Forum): the assessment should promote student learning by being explicitly linked to the learning objectives of the subject (constructive alignment (Biggs, 2003) and the "how" of this should be made clear to students).

• Specifically, staff might like to ask themselves does the assessment task help students to learn (Issacs, 2001)

➣ By being constructive in the sense that assessment tasks build on what has been assessed before and build from the simpler to the more complex?

Re this latter, does the assessment relate to different stages of learning? A simple way of stating this might be to say that higher-level abilities should be demonstrated by final year students. But it is also important to consider the incorporation of higher-level thinking into assessment tasks:

"There is an argument that all too often in ...higher education we assess the things which are easy to assess, which tend to be basic factual knowledge and comprehension rather than the higher order objectives of analysis, synthesis and evaluation." (Centre for Staff and Learning Development)

For example therefore: staff might ask themselves which level of the Bloom or Solo cognitive hierarchy (in terms of learning outcomes as described by different verbs) does the assessment task address? Alternatively, if the assessment task assesses the affective, rather than the cognitive, domain then a different taxonomy should be employed. Teachers might also care to consider whether the totality of the assessment regime relates well to different learning styles (e.g. aural, visual or kinaesthetic), to different cognitive styles (e.g. divergers, convergers, assimilators, explorers). Also under this head, the issue of the assessment re-iteratively providing timely, constructive information to students about their learning that is both formative and summative should be considered.

• Does the assessment strategy help the teacher to teach by providing timely information about the students' learning: this also should be both formative and summative.

• Is the assessment method manageable, in the sense that it is efficient and effective for both students and academics? (Bone, 1999, p.34; AUTC Project, 2001). Issues here include that-

➣ the work-load associated with marking student work is within the capacity (in terms of skill and time) of the teaching staff available; and

➣ the work-load associated with completing the work to be assessed is within the capacity (in terms of skill and time) of the students.

Gibbs, in particular, suggests a range of strategies for making assessment more manageable in large classes without unduly affecting learning, including "front-ending" to "minimize problems that may occur later" by putting more time into preparing the assessment task and briefing students; engaging them in practice assessments (such as peer- or self-assessed tasks) so that they can understand the criteria in use (Gibbs, 1992).

• Does the assessment provide equal opportunity? Assessment should provide equal opportunity to all students in a group. This means that the only factor limiting a particular student's performance should be their ability - not any variation in the opportunity for support provided to one student relative to another. Note that this means that we can (and do) provide some students with more support that others, but generally, should offer the same level of support to all of them.

• Is the assessment ethical? (Nulty et al., 2003) There are several ways in which assessment could be unethical. What follows is a non-exhaustive list. Clearly teachers should not ask students to complete tasks which are against their religious beliefs, or which would involve any criminal activity, or carry any health risk or which would oblige them to risk others. Similarly, students should be given a reasonable opportunity to freely choose to participate in the assessment (in the sense that there should not be any element of coercion involved, other than that the completion of assessment tasks is a subject requirement - yet, they still retain the right not to participate at any point and therefore receive no marks for that assessment.) Other aspects of ethical assessment are touched upon elsewhere in this checklist. For example; equity of opportunity should be evident for all items of assessment; adequate time should be available to all students to complete the task; the same resources should be available, marking criteria and standards should be clearly articulated etc.

While the preceding checklist items are generally to be taken into account for each specific assessment task, there are some points of enquiry worth asking of the whole assessment strategy for the subject of study and, further, for the entire program. Briefly, they may be stated as follows:

Does the whole assessment strategy:

• allow students to demonstrate their learning in different ways

• encourage students to learn in different ways

• cohere together to make a systematic and complete assessment.

Is the whole assessment strategy up and down scalable (in terms of size of student cohort)?

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

جمعيَّة العميد تعقد اجتماعًا مع الهيأة العُليا لإحياء التراث استعدادًا ليوم اللغة العربية

استعدادًا لزيارة الأربعين العتبة العباسية المقدسة تعزّز خزين المياه في مجمع أبي الفضل العباس (عليه السلام) عبر خزانات بسعة 900م3

الهيأة العليا لإحياء التراث تنهي استعداداتها لعقد مؤتمر الإمام الحسن (عليه السلام) الثاني عشر في النجف

المجمَع العلمي ينظّم محاضرة توعوية لطلبة مشروع الحفظ في بغداد

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

أخصائية تكشف خطورة عادة "شائعة" في غسل المناشف

دراسة: بيضة واحدة أسبوعيا قد تقي من الإصابة بـ

على عكس الشائع.. هذا هو العدد المثالي للخطوات اليومية !

شهر التوعية بالساركوما... أطباء يحذرون من "السرطان الصامت"

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

ذكر أم أنثى؟.. دراسة تنسف الاعتقاد الشائع حول جنس المولود

بحجم برج بيزا.. تحذير من كويكب يقترب من الأرض في هذا الموعد

أقصر يوم في تاريخ البشرية.. الموعد قريب ؟!!

مايكروسوفت تحذر شركات وأجهزة حكومية من هجوم "يوم الصفر"

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Assessment practices within a graduate attributes framework The need for the development of generic skills

Creating a Teaching and Learning Culture to Embed Graduate Attributes into Assessment Practices

An Assistant Dean, Learning and Teachings Role in Quality Assuring Assessment Conclusions

The assessment framework a basis for improvement.

An assessment framework

An assessment framework: some background and a sales spiel

Why an assessment framework?

Assessing problematic graduate attributes: a case study

Influence by scholarship

Influence by operationalization

Influence as mentor

Curriculum influence