Assessment design

'Students can, with difficulty, escape from the effects of poor teaching, they cannot (by definition if they want to graduate) escape the effects of poor assessment. Assessment acts as a mechanism to control students that is far more pervasive and insidious than most staff would be prepared to acknowledge.'

Boud, 1995, p.35

Since assessment drives student learning behaviour, a well designed assessment is crucial for student learning. The process of thinking about designing the teaching to best deliver the intended learning outcomes and then designing the assessment to test whether those outcomes have been appropriately delivered allows us to look at the alignment of the teaching with the assessment. This structure or strategy for planning teaching is very popular, particularly as it makes it easier for courses to comply with QAA regulations which tend to take a Learning Outcomes approach to ensuring consistency and quality.

Perhaps more importantly a well aligned piece of teaching is also more likely to result in a positive learning experience for the student and be easier for the teacher to manage and deliver.

The guiding principle of assessment design is that of constructive alignment. To read more about constructive alignment and to get more guidance on writing appropriate learning outcomes, visit our pages on these topics.

Looking at programme level assessment design

Evaluating assessment on individual courses is important, however what is even more important is thinking of design on a programme level. The modular nature of our programmes can lead to problems with overassessment, feedback that lacks feed forward qualities that links advice to learning in other modules, and students focussing on individual modules without seeing connections between them. Looking at assessment at a programme level means taking a more a more holistic (as opposed to modular) look at assessment design and potentially avoiding the previously mentioned problems.

Gibbs and Simpson (2004) came up with a series of pedagogic principles that underlie assessment design that supports learning. These conditions should be taken into account when designing assessments at the module and programme level. These include:

• There should be sufficient assessed tasks to capture sufficient student study time
• Assessment demands should be designed so as to orient students to distribute appropriate amounts of time and effort across all the important aspects of the course
• Tackling the assessed task engages students in productive learning activity of an appropriate kind
• Assessment should communicate clear and high standards
• Sufficient feedback needs to be provided, both often enough and in enough detail
• Feedback should focus on students’ performance, on their learning and on actions under the students’ control, rather than on the students themselves and on their characteristics
• Feedback should be timely: received by students while it still matters to them and in time for them to pay attention to further learning or receive further assistance
• Feedback should be appropriate in relation to students’ understanding of what they are supposed to be doing
• Feedback needs to be received and attended to
• Feedback should be provided in such a way that students act on it and change their future studying

(Gibbs and Simpson, 2004)

Below are some things to consider when looking at your overall programme level assessment design:

Resources

• Assessment patterns that fail, and that work [pdf] – a resource based on TESTA research giving some good advice about aspects to consider when designing good assessment

References

Boud, D. (1995). Enhancing Learning Through Self-Assessment. London. Routledge Falmer.

Gibbs, G and Simpson, C. (2004). Conditions under which assessment supports students' learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education vol.1 pp.3-31.