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“What and how students learn depends to a major extent on how they think they will be assessed. Assessment practices must send the right signals…” (Biggs, 1999, p. 141)

“So assessment methods and assessment criteria must be properly aligned with both (a) intended learning outcomes and (b) desired kinds of online activity.” (Goodyear, 2001, p. 147)

On this page

• Designing alignment
• Writing Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
• Structured progression
• Types of assessment
• Over-assessment
• Feedback and feedforward
• Scalability: Providing good feedback without increasing workload
• Writing assessment criteria: Marking guides and rubrics
• Rubrics
• Types of rubrics
• Strategic links
• Useful tools

Designing alignment

Alignment between learning outcomes, assessment tasks and learning activities is the crux of good course design. There are three main areas to consider when (re)designing assessment tasks:

1. Consider the graduate profile capabilities, what students will need to be able to demonstrate by the end of the course, and students’ prior knowledge and experience, to define appropriate learning outcomes.
2. Design learning experiences that help students build capability towards achieving intended learning outcomes.
3. Design appropriate assessment tasks that enable students to demonstrate their achievement.

Two commonly used approaches to guide this process are ‘backwards design’ (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) and ‘constructive alignment’ (Biggs, 1996).

First, focus on what your students need to be able to demonstrate they have learned at the end of your course. And how will they demonstrate these things?

Once you have defined what students need to be able to do to demonstrate their learning, the rest of your planning will focus on how you help them reach that point. Devise tasks that allow the learner to build and provide evidence of these abilities. Every one of your ILOs should be scaffolded and evidenced at some point in your course. Tasks (assessed or not) may be designed to develop and demonstrate more than one ILO/ GP.

Writing intended learning outcomes

Learning outcomes have three elements (Lincoln University, n.d.):

1. An action verb describing the behaviour (what the student will do) which demonstrates the learning.
2. Information about the context for the demonstration.
3. The level at which the outcome will be demonstrated.

Ideally a good learning outcome is specific, measurable and defined in a way that is easily understood.

Example:

ERST 1XX: Perspectives on the environment

From Lincoln University: https://tlc.lincoln.ac.nz/writing-good-learning-outcomes

The verb used to describe what the student will do to demonstrate learning should be a concrete action verb (e.g., identify) rather than an abstract action verb (e.g., understand).

Bloom’s revised taxonomy (cognitive domain), provides some guidance on the kind of action verbs you may wish to use in developing your ILOs to describe how students can demonstrate their learning.

Fig. 3 Bloom’s Taxonomy, revised version. From: Hos-McGrane, M. (2014). Flipping Grade 4 and Flipping Bloom’s Taxonomy Triangle. Tech Transformation. http://www.maggiehosmcgrane.com/2014/09/flipping-grade-4-and-flipping-blooms.html

The image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Note: Bloom’s model has been criticised on various levels and has been through a number of revisions, but it still serves as a good introduction to thinking about desired outcomes.

Types of assessment

Assessments are intended to measure knowledge acquisition, performance and capability development and must be aligned with intended learning outcomes. There are two main types of assessment (Ministry of Education, n.d.):

1. Formative assessments – conducted at specific intervals throughout a course to give students feedback on their performance and to give teachers information on how students are learning.
2. Summative assessments – conducted for the purpose of assigning a grade.

There are further types, including diagnostic—often used prior to a course as a benchmark or to ascertain a starting point, and ipsative—in which the student is compared against themselves (e.g., a past performance) rather than against others (normative), but essentially, assessment tasks either provide information for feedback and feedforward, or they are designed to measure outcomes. They may also do both. A balance between formative, summative and ipsative feedback such as in Portfolio-based assessment allows assessors to balance the three types/ modes.

Another way of thinking about various types of assessment and their function in learning is:

Assessment of learning

• Evidence of learning against intended outcomes.
• A snapshot of learning at a specific point in a course.
• Summative: Assignment, test, or exam.

Assessment as learning

• Empower and engage students in the assessment process.
• Opportunities for students to practise/perform the intended outcomes.
• Build agency, self-assessment, and goal setting skills.
• Foster self-reflection and self-managed learning.
• Improve metacognitive skills and application of knowledge.
• Usually formative: May be self-assessment questions/quizzes, practice assignments, optional review exercises.

Assessment for learning

• Gain feedback and feedforward, to evaluate and monitor progress.
• Formative: may be report or essay outlines, first drafts, to identify gaps in understanding or alter course delivery.

We can assess before (diagnostic tests, activation of prior knowledge), during and/or after learning. Assessment can happen in class or outside class, online or offline, (e.g. field work, practicum, group or individual project …)

Who can assess student learning?

Teachers, students and/ or students’ peers can do the assessing. Engaging students in self and peer assessment can be effective ways to develop critical thinking and objective analysis.

Giving students the opportunity to co-design tasks and/or assessment criteria can be a powerful way of increasing engagement and developing critical thinking skills.

Over-assessment

It is easy to fall into the trap of over-assessing students. Common reasons we end up overloading students are:

• We want to be sure we give students ample opportunity to demonstrate they have achieved the intended learning outcomes, so we assign multiple assessment tasks.
• We create discrete, small tasks that measure only a fragment of the desired achievements, so we feel we need to add more.
• We ‘split’ tasks into multiple parts (e.g., Assignment 1A, 1B etc.) to ‘squeeze in’ more without seemingly having too many.
• We offer multiple, small incentives to complete a lot of formative assessment tasks, for example participation in a discussion, plussage, or additional marks for doing a quiz.

Over-assessing creates unnecessary stress and pressure on workloads for both staff and students. Student overload is also a common motivating factor for academic dishonesty, so addressing over-assessment can help cultivate an environment that supports academic integrity. Remember that students are juggling many aspects of life, not only their study. Flexibility is key and assessment strategies that allow students to build skills over time are preferable to snapshots in time and fixed-time tests.

Common workarounds for over-assessment are:

• Review the number of formative and summative assessment tasks and how they inform one another. As a general guideline, 2-3 summative tasks are recommended at the University of Auckland, although multiple smaller tasks can be set as formative tasks to allow the development of the skills needed in summative tasks.
• Consider the assessment load for students horizontally across the programme, during the semester. Are there opportunities for skills development in one course to be complemented by skills development in a concurrent course?

The ‘cognitive walkthrough’ technique may help you decide if you are over-assessing (Goodyear, 2001). This essentially means putting yourself in the students’ place and mentally stepping through the course, or in this case assessment tasks, to get a feel for how long it would take and how clear the instructions are.

One way to determine how your topics and assessments are staggered throughout the course, is to map them to a grid. This course mapping template may help. It is a Microsoft Word document comprising assessments and learning activities as draggable boxes. The idea is that you align them to a weekly structure to determine the expected student workload, while paying attention to whether the grade allocations are fair.

Feedback and feedforward

“While feedback focuses on a student’s current performance, and may simply justify the grade awarded, feed forward looks ahead to subsequent assignments and offers constructive guidance on how to do better. A combination of both feedback and feed forward helps ensure that assessment has a developmental impact on learning.

Effective feedback should also stimulate action on the part of the student. The most effective practice treats feedback as an ongoing dialogue and a process rather than a product.” (JISC, 2015)

Feedback and feedforward are the primary means by which learners can assess what they need to work on and gauge their progress, so small tasks with lots of feedback early on helps make this path clear.

Students need (Absolum, 2006):

• Clarity about what learning is intended: What am I trying to learn here and why?
• Clarity about the criteria for the learning: How do I know when I have learnt and to what standard?
• Opportunities to understand and use the criteria – self and peers: How well am I going? What do I need to do?

Formative feedback

Formative feedback (assessment for learning) provides opportunities for the learner to reflect on:

• What am I doing that is right?
• What am I doing that needs adjustment and further work?

Feedback therefore needs to focus on both: to specify achievement and identify pathways to improvement. It is important that all (teachers, learners and peers):

• Understand the criteria and the standards.
• Have access to exemplars/ models/ external points of reference.

It’s also crucial for learners to have:

• Time to practise and revisit ideas.
• Time to act on feedback.
• Opportunities for reflection and self-evaluation.

According to Hattie and Timperley (2007), the aim of feedback is “reducing the discrepancies between current understandings/ performance and a desired goal” (p. 86).

Feedback typically tells us how we are progressing towards a goal; feedforward should tell us what we need to do to get closer to it.

Effective feedback is:

• Timely – Provide feedback as soon as possible after students submit their assessment, while it is still fresh in their minds, and they have time to incorporate feedback into their next assessment.
• Actionable – Provide concrete information and suggest strategies for improvement. Value-based statements such as “Excellent” or “Well done” do not help students understand why they did well or how to improve.
• Aligned to learning outcomes and assessment criteria – Connect feedback to the learning outcomes and the specific criteria in the marking rubric.

For more on effective feedback, including timing and how to avoid possible negative effects, see:

• Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112. https://doi.org/10.3102%2F003465430298487

Summative feedback as teaching quality indicators

Summative feedback (assessment of learning) is usually thought of as the final grade a student is awarded, usually with no indication of how these may have been improved.

However, for teaching staff, assessment data can be used for continuous enhancement to:

• Evaluate the quality of the teaching and learning experiences to improve teaching.
• Report the learning to a range of audiences to prove learning.

Scalability: Providing good feedback without increasing workload

Generic + short personal feedback

Giving generic feedback to the class, alongside a short, personalised comment to individuals can help with marking workload whilst giving students an idea of what good quality assignments looked like.

Example:

Feedback to class: “I was impressed by the extent to which some of you researched this question. On the whole most of you managed to identify …. which were…. The best answers were those that ….”

Feedback for individual student: “You did a good job of comparing … a little more reference to theory and research would have further strengthened this.”

Video or audio feedback can also be useful – students report that it feels more personal and lecturers that it can be quicker. This can be done in Canvas’ SpeedGrader.

• 3 time-saving ways to give assignment feedback with video.
• Video feedback on student assignments.
• Audio and video feedback for students (UWE Bristol).

Develop students’ skills in self-regulation and self-reflection

Common issues with assessment and feedback identified by JISC include under-developed abilities in self-regulation and self-reflection. Developing these as part of designing and scaffolding for assessments using constructive alignment can result in long-term positive effects on lecturer workload.

More information on the role of comparison in learning from feedback:

• Guiding learning by activating students’ inner feedback - David Nicol.
• Nicol, D. (2021). The power of internal feedback: exploiting natural comparison processes. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 46(5), 756-778. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02602938.2020.1823314

Writing assessment criteria: Marking guides and rubrics

Marking Guides and Rubrics contain criteria that describe the standards you are looking for in an assessment. They guide students around what you expect them to do and can also ensure consistency in marking processes. There are some differences between the two:

• Marking guides include somewhat vague criteria to enable more flexibility for the marker to judge the quality of the assessment.
• Rubrics are pre-set scoring sheets that specify the precise standards required to meet each grade.

Marking guides

Marking guides are useful when the assessment has no single correct answer or where creativity, translation, or other less precise, pre-determined ability is required. Marking guides allow the marker to evaluate and provide individualised comments on the learner’s interpretation of the task.

Disadvantages

• A marking guide is open to subjective judgement and so assessment can be much more variable/ contestable.
• May result in inconsistencies across marking teams.

Rubrics

There are many different types of rubrics for marking. The more detailed a rubric is in terms of allocated grade and description, the more precise it is. The use of rubrics can improve consistency amongst multiple markers. Pre-defined grades with specific criteria can also speed up marking, as there is little subjective judgement required.

Here we provide guidance on creating a rubric.

Table 2

* Considered optional by some educators and a critical component by others.

Rubric adapted from Dr. Bonnie B. Mullinix, Monmouth University, NJ

© 2012 Buck Institute for Education
Source: Rubric for rubrics @ Buck Institute for Education

Disadvantages

• Rubrics may limit creativity and divergent thinking as criteria are pre-set. For example, a wonderful, innovative idea might easily score 0% if it had not been predicted and accounted for in the criteria.

Types of rubrics

Holistic rubrics

Holistic rubrics describe standards that students are expected to progressively achieve over an entire programme. Holistic rubrics provide a means of evaluation that can be consistently applied across entire student cohorts to assess and grade multiple skills and tasks students may be required to demonstrate, such as critical thinking and collaborative teamwork.

The University of Auckland’s Business School created examples of holistic rubrics which include standards that can be easily adapted to meet the needs of any student cohort.

Analytical rubrics

An analytical rubric is a more specific multi-layered type of rubric used to assess complex learning based on several criteria, each of which is described at several levels of performance.

The TeachWell website provides a great deal more on providing effective feedback, feedback tools, and rubrics and criteria in Canvas.