1 / 21

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”

caelan
Download Presentation

Assessment in Higher Education

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Assessment in Higher Education Linda Carey Centre for Educational Development Queen’s University Belfast

  2. “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)

  3. 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

  4. “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

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

  6. 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

  7. Summative assessment (employment) • To license to proceed • To license to practice • To select for future employment • To predict success in future employment

  8. 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

  9. Diagnostic assessment • To look for predictable difficulties • To diagnose strengths and weaknesses

  10. 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

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

  12. 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

  13. 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

  14. 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

  15. 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

  16. 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?

  17. 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?

  18. 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

  19. 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

  20. 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?

  21. 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?

More Related