Learning Assessment: Hyperbolic Doubts Versus Deflated Critiques

Teaching@Sydney, 2019

One of the key goals of universities is to deliver a unique learning experience. Assessment, although may not be the most popular topic among either students or teachers due to negative connotations linked to high-stakes summative testing, plays an important role in steering the learning process. If we are aiming to transform our learning experience, this discussion should start from the widely accepted model of constructive alignment, a coherence between learning objectives, activities and assessments in an educational program. And yet there seems to be a gap between innovative methodologies and a tendency to predominantly evaluate through traditional essay written assessment. How can we rethink assessment so that it fits into our current vision of education?

Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 2017

Educational assessments define what aspects of learning will formally be given credit and therefore have a huge impact upon teaching and learning. Although the impact of high-stakes national and international assessments on teaching and learning is considered in the literature, remarkably, there is little research on the connection between theories of learning and educational assessments. Given the voluminous assessment that takes place annually in systematic ways in most many nations, it is surprising that more has not been gained from these assessments in the development of theories of learning and vice versa. In this article we consider both theories of learning and assessment and draw the main message of the article, that if assessments are to serve the goals of education, then theories of learning and assessment should be developing more closely with each other. We consider fundamental aspects of assessment theory, such as constructs, unidimensionality, invariance and quantifiability, and in doing so, we distinguish between educational and psychological assessment. Second, we show how less traditionally considered cases of a) international assessments and b) Assessment for Learning affect student learning. Through these cases we illustrate the otherwise somewhat theoretical discussion in the article. We argue that if assessment is to serve the learning goals of education, then this discussion on the relationship between assessment and learning should be developed further and be at the forefront of high-stakes, large-scale educational assessments.

University News, 2019

Assessment is an integral part of any teaching learning process. Assessment practices have a large number of functions to perform in the context of the teaching learning process. Do contemporary assessment practices perform these function is a critical question to be analysed. In this paper, an attempt has been made to analyse the myths and realities of the assessment practice in the higher education sector.

Legal Education Review, 2010

Seeking a Philosophy of Assessment: Rethinking and Reconceptualizing Assessment for Today’s Education and Society, 2023

The idea of assessment, while prevalent in education, needs rethinking. This paper reflects on the notion of assessment in today's society, proposing an alternative for what it could (and should) be. By critically analyzing the role of assessment in today's education, we conducted a hermeneutic examination of its original concept's influence on the potential shift away from subject taxation and its current pornification. Through a discussion of assessment's role in contemporary society and its true nature, the authors propose a shift from viewing assessment as a mere curriculum add-on to envisioning how a philosophy of assessment could profoundly transform education and society.

1985

The idea of assessment as learning is discussed, along with the practical history of assessment, and how student assessments should be conducted. Background information covers the use of assessment in'business and government, as well as in education and psychology. It is proposed that assessment include: multidimensional sampling of students' abilities in action; observation and judgment of those samples on the basis of explicit criteria; and structured feedback, administered sequentially in relation to a learner's development. Each of these elements in turn must contribute to the growth of the students' ability to self-assess. Issues relevant to beginning, intermediate, and advanced learners are identified, and research on criteria, feedback, and self-assessment is reviewed. To help faculty design individual classroom assessments, consideration is given to: determining a specific ability or expected outcome, identifying component abilities, selecting or designing a stimulus and context, attending to developmental levels, developing criteria, providing for self-assessment, and judging performance and giving feedback. Included are guidelines for judging whether criteria are effective and an example of extending assessment beyond the classroom to a wider curriculum context. (SW)

An important rationale for higher education is that it equips students for learning beyond the point of graduation. Th is paper considers the role that assessment plays in this. It suggests we need to take a new perspective on assessment: assessment to promote learning throughout life. It focuses on ideas that can be used to contribute to the construction of assessment practices and on wider implications for course design. It concludes by exploring barriers to acceptance of this perspective and how they might be addressed.

2018

of these reforms are geared towards closing gaps between well-meant educational intentions and student outcomes through more innovative teaching-learning systems and multi-dimensional, authentic forms of assessment. Assessment, as comprising the ways of gathering evidence of student learning, has long been recognized as a powerful tool in any educational reform (Lachat, 1999). Quality assessments provide valid and reliable inferences that serve to improve student

Assessment is probably the most important thing we can do to help our students learn. We may not like it, but students can and do ignore our teaching; however, if they want to get a qualification, they have to participate in the assessment processes we design and implement. For that reason I believe it is worth thinking through, individually and collectively, what we currently do and exploring how we can do our best to ensure that our assessment practices help rather than hinder learning. In this paper I will explore these issues, play with a negative exercise about what we can do to hinder learning and conclude with some pointers towards integrating learning and assessment. Internationally, assessment is changing as the nature of teaching and learning in post-compulsory education changes. The student population in many countries is becoming diverse, with increasing numbers of part-time students, mature students and students coming from non-traditional backgrounds, particularly in the UK, where there is a political imperative to widen participation to students from socioeconomic groups who previously had little or no access to higher education. A diverse population of learners necessitates a change in practice in post-compulsory education, with less focus on didactic tutor-led approaches and more concentration on the learning outcomes that students can hope to achieve (Miller et al., 1998; Rust, 2002). Fit-for-purpose assessment I have long argued that assessment needs to be 'fit-for-purpose'; that is, it should enable evaluation of the extent to which learners have learned and the extent to which they can demonstrate that learning (Brown & Smith, 1997). We need to consider not just what we are assessing and how we are doing it (particularly which methods and approaches), but also why — our rationale for assessing on

ukm.my

This paper reports on the preliminary findings of a doctoral study in progress, which is situated in the context of quality in higher education, and is premised on the view that the student learning experience is ultimately the most meaningful and lasting measure of academic quality. The literature on assessment in higher education clearly places assessment at the heart of student learning and it is claimed that "the truth about an educational system" may be discovered by examining its assessment procedures (Rowntree, 1987, p.1). Using a qualitative case study approach, the study aims to reveal the values inherent in assessment, to show how these are conveyed through institutional discourses and through practices of lecturers, and how students' learning behaviour may be affected by their perspectives of assessment. Data gathering activities for the entire doctoral research include focus group discussions and individual interviews with finalyear undergraduates, interviews with their lecturers, observations of lectures and classroom assessments, examination of documents related to the course descriptions and assessment, as well as a study of the administrative and procedural aspects of assessment which are part of the assessment praxis. The emerging themes reported here, based solely on the analysis of two of the focus group discussions, indicate how assessment praxis in higher education seems to be a reproduction of dominant power structures that have inculcated patterns of student passivity in learning. This has serious implications for the 1 This is a revised version of a work-in-progress paper presented by Lee King Siong at the 30 th Language Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC) 2008, Hangzhou, China. Attendance at the conference was funded by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.