Assessment for Learning
The School has special expertise in Assessment for Learning.
Assessment for Learning means that students benefit from assessment which does far more than simply test what they know. It ensures that students take part in the kinds of activities that are: valuable long term, help them to develop, provide them with guidance and feedback and ensure that students learn how to assess themselves as future professionals.
The key components of the AfL model are:
• Authentic assessment
• Balancing formative and summative assessment
• Active and participatory learning
• Feedback through dialogue
• Feedback through participation
• Development of student autonomy
Authentic assessment
Authentic assessment is about the nature of assessment tasks. It is about making assessment tasks more ‘realistic’ and meaningful, ensuring that assessment focuses on important and valuable knowledge, skills and understanding. Authentic assessment is based on meaningful tasks that can be an effective hook to engage students more purposefully in their studies. Students’ approaches to assessment tasks that appear to them to be ‘meaningful’ rather than ‘meaningless’ are of a very different quality.
Balancing formative and summative assessment
Formative assessment is one of the most powerful tools for improving learning; that is its main purpose. We need to find space for formative assessment in universities where summative assessment and testing often occupies a substantial amount of staff and student time and may be used to ‘drive the learning’ leaving little opportunity for students to try things out, take risks or learn from mistakes
Active and participatory learning
Transmission models of teaching and learning, typified by the extensive use of lectures, are still prevalent in higher education. However we want students to develop capabilities such as critical thinking, communication skills, use of evidence, and abilities to address novel problems or questions drawing on relevant subject knowledge. If students are to develop in this way they need to practice appropriate kinds of activities, obtain and use feedback. They will then be more likely to develop higher level requirements and also be better prepared for summative assessment.
Feedback through dialogue
Feedback is an essential component of AfL support for productive learning. Conventional feedback in higher education such as teacher comment on student work has its limitations often being seen by students as ‘too little, too late, too vague’. Feedback is significantly improved by dialogue based around activities that make students’ ideas and aspects of their academic work available for feedback and discussion with lecturers in more timely and appropriate. An example is feedback conversations about draft work on an individual or group basis
Feedback through participation
Teaching and learning methods within the classroom can provide a feedback-rich environment where feedback comes from a range of sources and methods. A rich feedback environment is best developed by participatory approaches where students learn in collaboration with others. In this context, feedback comes from hearing what fellow students say and think and seeing how they approach tasks and at the same time gauging the response to your own ideas and proposals. It is short-cycle feedback, specific and contextualised, which complements more formal tutor written feedback.
Development of student autonomy
Students’ abilities to manage their own learning and to review, or self-assess, their own progress are regarded as key graduate attributes. Students need opportunities to stand back and evaluate their own performance; give and receive feedback; and actively work with performance criteria and standards. They are then more able to play an active role, rather than feeling disempowered by ‘never knowing what the lecturers really want’. Autonomy and a sense of ownership of one’s own academic work are key features of productive student engagement.
Centre for Excellence in Assessment for Learning
We have been recognised as the national centre for Assessment for Learning (AfL) by the award of substantial funding from the HE Funding Council for England (2005 – 2010). The CETL Assessment for Learning influenced assessment practice across the whole University and beyond. The Schools of Health, Community & Education Studies, Arts & Social Sciences, Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences and Life Sciences played leadership roles in the CETL.
The CETL AfL web site is linked here. This site is no longer updated but it contains useful resources, information about research, activities, events and publications.
