Assessment in Higher
Education
Linda Carey Centre for
Educational Development
Queen’s University Belfast
“Assessment is at the heart of student
experience”
Brown and Knight (1994)
“If you want to change student learning
then change the method of assessment”
Brown, Bull & Pendlebury (1997)
Aligning the learning outcomes and
the assessment (Biggs, 2002)

Defining the intended learning outcomes
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Choosing teaching/learning activities likely
to lead to attaining the learning outcomes
Assessing students’ learning outcomes to
see how well they match what was intended
Arriving at a final grade
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“Students learn what they think they’ll be
assessed on, not what’s in the curriculum.
The trick is, then, to make sure the
assessment tasks mirror what you intended
them to learn”
Biggs, 2002, page 6
Modes of assessment
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Summative
Formative
Diagnostic
How is assessment carried out?
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Tutor assessment
Peer or self assessment
On-line assessment (usually MCQs)
Summative assessment
(educational)

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To pass or fail students
To grade or rank students
To select for future courses
To predict success in future courses
To motivate students
Summative assessment
(employment)

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To license to proceed
To license to practice
To select for future employment
To predict success in future employment
Formative assessment


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To provide feedback to students to improve
their learning
To provide a profile of what a student has
learnt
To help students to develop their skills of
self assessment
To motivate students - possibly through goal
setting
Diagnostic assessment


To look for predictable difficulties
To diagnose strengths and weaknesses
Range of assessment methods
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Unseen, closed book exam: essay answers,
short question answers, combination
Open book exam
Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) exam
Course work: essay, report, project
Learning Journal
Portfolio
Presentation and/or poster
Peer or self assessment
Task 1: Discuss in groups
What assessment methods do you use?
What are the advantages and
disadvantages of these methods?
Some common problems with
assessment
(partially based on material presented by William Thompson
at Queen’s University, Belfast 2010 )

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The assessment tasks do not match the
stated learning outcomes
The marking criteria do not match the tasks
or outcomes
The criteria are not known to students
Students do not understand the criteria

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Overuse of one mode of assessment such as
written examinations, essays, MCQs
Assessment overload for students and staff
Insufficient time for students to do the
assignments
Too many assignments with the same
deadline

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Insufficient time for staff to mark the
assignments or examinations
Absence of well defined criteria so
consistency is difficult to achieve
Unduly specific criteria which create a
straitjacket for students and make marking
burdensome for lecturers
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Inadequate or superficial feedback provided
to students
Wide variations in marking between modules
and assessors and within assessors (selfconsistency)
Variations in assessment demands of
different modules
Lack of programmatic assessment
Designing effective assessment

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What are the outcomes to be assessed?
What are the capabilities/skills (implicit or
explicit) in the outcomes?
Is the method of assessment chosen
consonant with the outcomes and skills?
Is the method relatively efficient in terms of
student time and staff time?

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What alternative types of assessment are
there? What are their advantages and
disadvantages?
Does the specific assessment task match the
outcomes and skills?
Are the marking schemes or criteria
appropriate?
Effective feedback
(Sadler, 1989)
To benefit from feedback students should
 Know the goal or standard being aimed for

Compare their performance with the goal or
standard

Take action to close the gap
 Make sense of the feedback
 Know what actions to take
Good Practice in Giving Feedback
• Does the feedback relate to the assessment
criteria?
• Is it linked directly to the student’s work?
• Is the feedback timely?
• Is it understandable to the learner?
• Language clear and jargon-free
• How much feedback do you provide?
• Sufficient but not overwhelming
Good Practice in Giving Feedback
• Does it include positive as well as negative
comments?
Feedback sandwich – positive-negativepositive
• Does it clearly prioritise areas for
improvement?
• Does it focus on action points: what does the
student needs to do to improve next time?
Task 2: Aligning assessment with
learning outcomes
Complete the assessment grid for a module
you teach:
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What are the learning outcomes?
How will you assess each learning outcome?
What are the weightings for each
assessment task?