Designing inclusive assessment:
- Assessment has a major impact on students and their learning
- Summative assessment helps students asses their future potential
Validity
A valid assessment task must link directly to the learning taking place
I.e a reflective blog = shows a students ability to communicate self reflection
Validity = the assessment type matches the type of learning taking place and learning you want the students to demonstrate
Main types of assessment:
Formative assessment – assess progress and inform further learning/ areas of improvement
- can be verbal, digital or written tasks or detailed and lengthy activities that help students reflect on their learning and what they need to improve on
- Could be a good point for self assessment – the students asses where they are in their process – what they need to do
- Also a good area to check in with the students to see whether they understand the assessment and marking criteria, to clarify any concerns within their work
Summative assessment – end of term/ unit or year assessment
More extensive, broader and have more weighting
Holistic- look at the overall work and contains multiple elements
Students are given an overall banding or grade in accordance with the marking criteria
Diversifying assessment for inclusivity:
- Should be adaptable for students who have learning differences
- Assessment should also assess things that are difficult to demonstrate
- Keep accessibility in mind
- Who are my students?
- English may not be their first language
- students with anxiety/ struggle to present/ talk about their work in group settings should have other alternatives
- Can have different prior educational experiences and background
:…how can staff do this in a systematic way that doesn’t exhaust themselves and the students in the process?”
Poorly aligned assessment – has an extension activity, students produce work that is not addressed by initial learning outcomes or teaching activities
Well-aligned assessment – relates to what has been taught, the tasks done by the students with support from tutors and peers
We should view assessment as something designed of, for and as learning
Assessment of learning:
- Assessing the evidence of student learning and achievement
- Awarding credits or a qualification
Design principles: appropriate, robust and fair
- Assessment should be designed in a way that produces the correct/ necessary evidence
- Assessment should relate directly to what the students learn, according to learning outcomes and planned learning activity
Assessment for learning:
- Constructive and timely feedback to enable learning
- Summative and formative assessments can be used as feedback points for lecturers – assess how the teaching, resources, learning environment benefits the student
Design principles: effective, practical and realistic
- To facilitate learning, the assessment task needs to be related to the work or upcoming learning (feed-forward)
- Formal feedback (tutors comments), allows the students to develop the ability to evaluate their learning and progress, take accountability and direct themselves, build confidence
Practical and realistic assessment for learning needs to be designed early on and scheduled across the unit or course.
Assessment as learning:
- Gives students the oppurtunity to judge their own learning, progress and performance against the marking criteria
Design principles: creative, embedded and flexible
- Assessment as learning creatively envisions outcomes in diverse and authentic ways
- Students learn by doing the assessment and reflecting on their learning
- Embedded in doing real-world challenges
- More personalised and individual accounts
Bibliography:
Stephens, T. and Staddon, E. (no date) “Course Designer: Designing Inclusive Assessment.” London: University of the Arts London. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/190396/Course-Designer-5-Designing-Inclusive-Assessment-PDF-296KB.pdf (Accessed: 27/12/2022)