assessment in higher education linda carey centre for educational development queen’s university...
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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?