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Assessment is an integral part of learning and teaching. Assessment involves collecting information on student learning in a purposeful, systematic and ongoing way. The main purposes of assessment are:
Assessment design to create high quality assessment tasks and ensure comparability of standards within and between student groups in the same Course. Assessment especially has a major influence on student learning behaviours: "What do I need to do to Pass this course or get a Distinction, etc.". It is for this very reason that the assessment needs to be carefully crafted and woven into the fabric of the Course. There needs to be direct alignment between the curriculum, learning experiences and assessment tasks. In particular, authentic learning tasks promote higher levels of learning and engagement.
This aims to prompt you to reflect upon your own practices and provide some valuable ideas to help inform your professional reflection. The Educational Development Team is available to support your further improving assessment practices, tailored to your course and needs. Just ask.
As a lecturer, once you have designed your learning objectives/outcomes for a course it is time to design your assessment. Remember, that your aim is to encourage your students to engage with the learning activities you are going to design.
An important goal of assessment is to engage the learner. If you design assessment that the students find interesting and enjoyable, the learning they experience is more likely to be deeper than if they feel that they are "just jumping through hoops".
Assessment that is woven into the Course is more likely to engage the learners than assessment that sits apart from the learning activities. The assessment used to determine grades (summative assessment) needs, where possible, to be negotiable within set conditions for students to develop their responses to the assessment task.
Students that are able to negotiate their own assessment tasks are more likely to develop ownership and a deeper level of learning. Examples include the context (such as a classroom for a preservice teacher or a hospital ward for a nurse) of responding to the assessment task and mode (such as multi modal or written). By undertaking assessment tasks within their area of interest, students are likely to set their own learning goals and will often work harder to achieve these than the performance goals set by the course designer.
Plagiarism is also less of a concern, as each student has the capacity to negotiate aspects of their responses to assessment tasks. Sometimes, however, the nature of the assessment requirements means that this is not possible and all students in a course may have to respond to the assessment task in the same conditions (a supervised test is an example).
CQUniversity policy in this area is: Assessment of Coursework Policy available at: http://policy.cqu.edu.au/Policy/policy.jsp?policyid=701
The University's Grades and Results Procedures is available at http://policy.cqu.edu.au/Policy/policy_file.do?policyid=437
A range of terms on assessment and feedback are in the CQUniversity Glossary available at http://glossary.cqu.edu.au/Glossary/
(http://www.tki.org.nz/r/assessment/atol_online/ppt/041008_quality_feedback.ppt)
Assist the student to understand the goals of the learning
There are a large number of assessment strategies that you can employ that ensure that the students have learned from the activities you have provided. The following list gives you a few options:
Schofield, Mark (Edge Hill University) Assessment and Technology to Support Learning (July 2011)
Assessment Beyond Intuition (Videostream) and PowerPoint slides (in PDF format)
(presented by Assoc. Prof. Jan Orrell - Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Ltd)
This videostream presentation highlights issues about assessment, especially marking, and the challenges facing staff in giving students appropriate and timely feedback.
This presentation is especially relevant to early career academics and sessional staff.
Resources for this presentation:
SPARK: Self & Peer Assessment Resource Kit is an open source tool developed by University of Technology Sydney that allows students to rate each others and their own performance in group/team situations. The numerical factor derived from this feedback can be used to modify group marks for individual students and presents strong motivation for all students to work effectively within their groups/teams. Learn more about SPARK
Assessment Futures: This website was funded by ALTC and developed by University of Technology, Sydney. It aims to provide University staff with the means to equip students for the learning and assessing they will need to do after completing their course and the challenges they will face after graduation. This website contains a range of links to key assessment elements. Learn more at: http://www.assessmentfutures.com
Re:View - online criteria-based assessment: a catalyst to assist staff in making explicit the assessment criteria and to allow students to 'self-assess' against those criteria.
Doing Group Assessment in Media and Communication: An ALTC project addressing groupwork. This project was completed with the media and communication disciplines in mind, but the issues it addresses are similar across all fields. The site also provides a forum for peer contributions.
The IDEA Centre (Individual Development and Educational Assessment) : This page, maintained by the Kansas State University, has interesting examples of Student Ratings, as well as Feedback systems for Deans, Administrators and Chairpersons, and short publications (the IDEA Papers) on a range of topics related to learning and teaching.
Online Assessment : This page, from the Centre for the study of higher education's Website, deals with the issues that surround assessing students online. The approach taken by the author is one focused on more traditional approaches to curriculum design and assessment.
Assessing Learning in Australian Universities: This is an AUTC initiative that offers advice on, and examples of, assessment for Higher Education
Assessment in Higher Education: (Education Services Australia) website.
CQUniversity CRICOS Provider Codes: QLD-00219C; NSW-01315F; VIC-01624D
