Bloxham, S. & Boyd, P. (2007). Developing Effective Assessment in Higher EducationLinks to an external site.. Maidenhead: Open University Press/McGraw Hill.
Chapter 3: The conflicting purposes of assessment, pp. 31-46
The conflicting purposes of assessment
The various purposes of assessment
Assessment as learning (the students are doing the learning as they work on the assessment), assessment for learning (the peer and group learning encourages formative discussion and feedback) & assessment of learning in that the task attempts to be a valid measurement of the learning outcomes in terms of understanding and application of the law.
4 purposes of assessment:
Certification: This provides a means to discriminate or identify at what level a student is at.
Student Learning: This promotes learning through motivation an provides teachers with useful information in order to adjust teaching strategies.
Quality assurance: This is a way of moderating for specific stakeholders. For instance inspectors, external examiners etc. (Gibbs 1999) – assessment of learning
Lifelong Learning Capacity: To equip students and encourage them to develop skills, knowledge and predispositions in order to enable lifelong learning (Boud 2000: 151) – assessment as learning.
These 4 purposes can clash with each other.
Validity
A range of different validities exist (Elton and Johnston 2002), principles can overlap including effectiveness, reliability, and transparency.
Intrinsic Validity – Assessment tasks are assessing the stated learning outcomes.
We need to ensure that the assessment tasks will give the student the appropriate skills in order to action what is learnt for say professional, subject-specific or key skills (Elton and Johnston 2002).
“Falchikov (2005) discusses the concept of ‘predictive validity’, the notion that an assessment tells us something about future behaviour.” For example assessing a plaster making module with a written examination would not give you the confidence that the student would be able to achieve what is learnt. We need to asses what more closely judges what has been learnt.
“In general, examinations are valid for assessing recall and understanding of factual and conceptual knowledge.” Page 38
Reliability
Assessment tasks should generate comparable marks across time, markers and methods. You can demonstrate reliability when different markers come to the same conclusion and judgement over time.
Elton and Johnson (2002) provide a discussion which outlines: “a positivist approach believes in the importance of validity and reliability, assuming that objective standards can be set. The alternative, interpretivist, approach rejects objective truth and conceives of assessment as based on a local context, carried out through the judgement of experts in the field. In their view, it is a social practice whose credibility emerges from a community of practice which shares a consensus about what constitutes accepted knowledge, rules and procedures.”
Reliability is particularly important when it comes to certification and quality assurance.
Effectiveness
Assessment tasks should be designed to create good quality, deeper learning outcomes. (Gibbs 1999; Elton and Johnston 2002; Dunn et al. 2004), believe that assessment can be an effective tool for the promotion of learning.
Comparability and consistency
There should be consistent and comparable approaches to the summative assessment requirements across programmes and institutions. For instance the number of hours required and the level of learning gained to appreciate credits for a subject.
“in the UK that practices vary significantly between and within universities (Yorke et al. 2004; QAA 2006a), leaving degree classification unreliable and inconsistent (Elton, 2004). Above all, comparability and consistency are related to ensuring quality standards and fairness rather than a direct link to assessment for learning.” Page 41
Equity
Students experience equality in order to effectively demonstrate their learning.
Making reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities, or additional needs. ‘Extenuating circumstances’
Practicability
Assessment tasks must be practicable for both staff and students in terms of the time needed for completion and marking.
Avoiding the bunching of assessments together.
The availability of staff, venue, equipment, technical support for examination and assignment also comes into practicability.
Ross (2005) argues that as the university landscape changes and the intake numbers of students rise there needs to be streamlining of assessment tasks so that students and teachers can cope. He also writes about the importance of ‘stripping back’ the assessment task in order to keep it specifically in line with the learning outcomes.
Transparency
Information, guidance, rules and regulations on assessment should be clear, accurate, consistent and accessible to all staff, students, practice teachers and external examiners. (Gosling and Moon 2002; Orr 2005) supports transparency to promote fairness, better communication and avoiding confusion within the educational environment.
Students need more than just the assessment criteria as they require interpretation and explanation within context (Crook et al. 2006).
Attribution
Tasks should generate clear evidence that the work (of whatever nature) has been produced by the candidate.
This includes plagiarism and collusion.
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