Invitation to Assessment Assessment
Sally Brown, Director of Quality, University of Northumbria, UK
This article was written by Sally Brown when she started up the
Assessment pages in 1996. In the article she sets out some of her ideas
and views on assessment with the intent to provoke debate on what we
are doing (and what we should be doing differently) in the field of
assessment in Higher Education. The debate on assessment is ongoing so
if you have any comments on this please do send these to us.
| My passion in life is assessment. I write books and articles on
it, run workshops in my own university and round the world on the
subject, I speak on assessment at conferences and often spend most of
my waking hours thinking about it. I even dream about assessment issues
occasionally! |
Assessment systems in universities and Colleges in the UK as well as
in many other countries are changing. More than ever before, we are
reviewing the means by which we assess our students, asking:
- How can we cope with the vast number of students now in Higher Education in effective and efficient ways?
- How can we offer appropriate assessment methods to the diverse
range of students who present themselves to us, often a broad range of
competences and knowledge which is largely unaccredited?
- How can our assessment methods be designed like our
teaching-methods to demonstrate the Copernican shift in our thinking
from the tutor at the centre of the universe to the student?
- How can we manage meaningful and holistic assessment strategies within an often fragmented modular system?
Here is my own personal hit list, including the features I would
like to zap out of existence were I able to wave a magic wand, as well
as the aspects of assessment I regard as being at the top of the charts!
What gets my big red cross?Assessment systems that:
- are crumbling beneath the burden of inefficient mark-recording
systems, with students being given incorrect marks or getting them so
late they can''t hope to remediate deficiences.
- don''t give students a second chance when they fail (which nowadays often has disastrous personal and financial consequences).
- assess the wrong things or the same (limited) range of things
too often, so we don''t get a fair and realistic overview of what our
students can achieve.
- place undue reliance on recall, rather than enable students
to transfer and apply what they have learned to different concepts and
problems.
- don''t make the quality assessors, the students or us happy because they are not demonstrably fair, valid and reliable.
- don''t help students learn because they don''t provide enough formative feedback (too many numbers, not enough words)
- drive already-burdened academics to the brink of mania because they are unwiedly, time consuming and ineffectual!
What gets a golden tick from me?Assessment systems that:
- concentrate on what is learned rather than what is taught, with a student-centred rather than a tutor-centred focus.
- let students in on the process, by allowing them all know the
rules of the game, particularly by the use of transparent, available
and meaningful criteria, instead of making them play the "guess what''s
in teacher''s mind" game.
- are fit for purpose, relating closely to the specified
learning outcomes and assessing the right things, not what is easy to
assess.
- promote lifelong learning, by helping students to evaluate
their own and their peers achievements realistically, not just
encouraging them always to rely on (tutor) evaluation from on high.
- encourage divergent outcomes rather than convergent ones, so
the students have the opportunity to demonstrate their individuality
rather than striving towards a single, correct answer.
Your hit list might look rather different from mine or you might
like to amplify, extend or exemplify any parts of my manifesto with
your comments. I look forward to hearing from you through the
electronic wizardy that is our medium.
If you''re moved to respond to my thoughts on assessment, join
now in the on some of the issues raised by sending in your comments.
I''ve also provided three items to prompt discussion. These are:
- The Art of Assessing by Phil Race, which develops some of the issues I raised in my first article.
- Innovative Student Assessment
by Graham Mowl in which he looks at what constitutes innovative
assessment and at some of the implications of introducing new methods.
- An Assessment Manifesto from the Kogan Page book, 500 Tips on Assessment by Phil Race, Brenda Smith and Sally Brown (1996).
If you browse through these, you might find matters you might like
to take issue with, suggestions to resolve some of the dilemmas we
raise and offers of other interesting extracts or short papers you
might like us to include on the Assessment Section of this electronic
magazine.
You might also like to respond to some of these questions
which I find commonly arise in the workshops I convene here and abroad:
- can we ever hope to assess students in a genuinely objective
manner? If so, how can we do it? Are there some subjects where this is
easier to do than others?
- how can we use assessment most effectively to promote learning so that it becomes really part of the process?
- are there any ways in which we can use assessment to motivate
some of the students we have currently in HE who are undergraduate only
because no practical alternatives exist for them (the so-called
professional students for who students life is more important than a
love of learning)?
Note from the Deliberations editor:
The issues raised by
Sally Brown and by the three articles she refers to are still very much
alive. If you have any comments you would like to share with readers or
issues you would like to raise please send them to us. Your
contributions will appear in the comments archive.
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