Assessment in Higher Education

Assessment in Higher Education

• Linda Carey Centre for Educational Development
• Queen’s University Belfast

• “Assessment is at the heart of student experience”
• Brown and Knight (1994)
• “If you want to change student learning then change the method of assessment”
• Brown, Bull & Pendlebury (1997)

Aligning the learning outcomes and the assessment (Biggs, 2002)

• Defining the intended learning outcomes
• Choosing teaching/learning activities likely to lead to attaining the learning outcomes
• Assessing students’ learning outcomes to see how well they match what was intended
• Arriving at a final grade

• “Students learn what they think they’ll be assessed on, not what’s in the curriculum.
• The trick is, then, to make sure the assessment tasks mirror what you intended them to learn”
• Biggs, 2002, page 6

Modes of assessment

• Summative
• Formative
• Diagnostic
• How is assessment carried out?
• Tutor assessment
• Peer or self assessment
• On-line assessment (usually MCQs)

Summative assessment (educational)

• To pass or fail students
• To grade or rank students
• To select for future courses
• To predict success in future courses
• To motivate students

Summative assessment (employment)

• To license to proceed
• To license to practice
• To select for future employment
• To predict success in future employment

Formative assessment

• To provide feedback to students to improve their learning
• To provide a profile of what a student has learnt
• To help students to develop their skills of self assessment
• To motivate students - possibly through goal setting

Diagnostic assessment

• To look for predictable difficulties
• To diagnose strengths and weaknesses

Range of assessment methods

• Unseen, closed book exam: essay answers, short question answers, combination
• Open book exam
• Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) exam
• Course work: essay, report, project
• Learning Journal
• Portfolio
• Presentation and/or poster
• Peer or self assessment

• Task 1: Discuss in groups
• What assessment methods do you use?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of these methods?

Some common problems with assessment (partially based on material presented by William Thompson at Queen’s University, Belfast 2010 )

• The assessment tasks do not match the stated learning outcomes
• The marking criteria do not match the tasks or outcomes
• The criteria are not known to students
• Students do not understand the criteria

• Overuse of one mode of assessment such as written examinations, essays, MCQs
• Assessment overload for students and staff
• Insufficient time for students to do the assignments
• Too many assignments with the same deadline

• Insufficient time for staff to mark the assignments or examinations
• Absence of well defined criteria so consistency is difficult to achieve
• Unduly specific criteria which create a straitjacket for students and make marking burdensome for lecturers

• Inadequate or superficial feedback provided to students
• Wide variations in marking between modules and assessors and within assessors (self-consistency)
• Variations in assessment demands of different modules
• Lack of programmatic assessment

Designing effective assessment

• What are the outcomes to be assessed?
• What are the capabilities/skills (implicit or explicit) in the outcomes?
• Is the method of assessment chosen consonant with the outcomes and skills?
• Is the method relatively efficient in terms of student time and staff time?

• What alternative types of assessment are there? What are their advantages and disadvantages?
• Does the specific assessment task match the outcomes and skills?
• Are the marking schemes or criteria appropriate?

Effective feedback (Sadler, 1989)

• To benefit from feedback students should
• Know the goal or standard being aimed for
• Compare their performance with the goal or standard
• Take action to close the gap
• Make sense of the feedback
• Know what actions to take

Good Practice in Giving Feedback

• Does the feedback relate to the assessment criteria?
• Is it linked directly to the student’s work?
• Is the feedback timely?
• Is it understandable to the learner?
• Language clear and jargon-free
• How much feedback do you provide?
• Sufficient but not overwhelming

Good Practice in Giving Feedback

• Does it include positive as well as negative comments?
• Feedback sandwich – positive-negative-positive
• Does it clearly prioritise areas for improvement?
• Does it focus on action points: what does the student needs to do to improve next time?

Task 2: Aligning assessment with learning outcomes

• Complete the assessment grid for a module you teach:
• What are the learning outcomes?
• How will you assess each learning outcome?
• What are the weightings for each assessment task?