1. Assessment literacy: a new perspective on enhancing learning
Margaret Price
Professor Emerita (Assessment and Learning)

2. The Assessment World – some factors
Modularity
Purposes of assessment
Dialogic feedback
Assessment drives learning
Transparency and accountability
Student Voice
Evaluation
Quality Assurance and accreditation systems
Discourse of assessment

3. Assessment practice
More traditional forms of assessment tend to be taken for granted (Pryor and Croussard 2007) Assessment is being slow to catch up with pedagogic developments Impact on assessment cultures. Teachers and students develop implicit and explicit expectations about learning and assessment (Ecclestone, 2006)

4. Where do we go from here?
‘The domain that perhaps offers greatest unexploited scope for improvement concerns student learning development. Successful students use feedback differently and more effectively (without the context or the feedback changing) and it is possible to change how students perceive feedback and what they do with it.’
(Research report available at

5. Questions:
Why do we leave students largely in a passive role EXCEPT as evaluators? Are students equipped to be effective evaluators? Do they understand teaching and assessment? Is staff understanding of assessment and feedback good enough to support development of evaluative skills about the process of learning?

6. Assessment Literacy
appreciation of assessment’s relationship to learning;
conceptual understanding of assessment
understanding of the nature, meaning and level of assessment criteria and standards;
skills in self- and peer assessment;
familiarity with technical approaches to assessment
possession of the intellectual ability to select and apply appropriate approaches and techniques to assessed tasks
(Price et al, 2012)

7. Assessment Literacy
Used in the context of skills and associated with attributes of fluency and competence
Slowly learnt ‘gateway’ or ‘threshold’ skills which, once mastered, allow access, not only to further learning and knowledge, but also to academic communities, their practices and standards (Yorke, 2001;Gourlay, 2009; Meyer and Land, 2006)
Embedded in competencies, knowledge, and skills which in turn, are situated in a much wider context with broader benefits (Boud, 2009)
Context is made up of social and cultural factors/signifiers, which are interpreted and internalised by individuals who bring their own historical, social and cultural narratives (Torrance, 2011)

8. Why assessment literacy
Develop a discourse of assessment
Build confidence in assessment
Redefine the role of the student
Equip students to take more control of their learning
Develop self evaluative ability, independent learning
Develop student confidence and capability to participate in learning communities
Make students less reliant on staff
Allow students to go beyond rating the satisfaction with assessment and feedback ‘service’ to evaluating the effect on their learning.

9. Intentional development of assessment literacy
What can we do?
Planning at programme level
Pre-assessment
Assessment activity
Post assessment (Feedback)
Beyond the programme

10. Programme level approach
Staff team need a programme view
Where there is a greater sense of the holistic programme, students are more likely to achieve the learning outcomes than students on programmes with a more fragmented sense of the programme.
(Havnes, 2007)
Assessment strategy
A coherent plan and narrative of assessment and feedback across the programme
Deliberate development of assessment literacy

11. Critical learning (and assessment moments)
Radical movement involving zones of discomfort, ‘threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge’ (Meyer and Land, 2006)
Changes in ‘epistemology and knowledge structures’ (Basil Bernstein in Moore et al, 2006)
Learning development
First small explosion alludes to the frisson of fear that all students feel at the outset of a course – the unknown. In this programme not much change in terms of the nature of learning, knowledge and teaching was experienced by the students compared to their prior studies. However, this first small explosion can be termed the ‘unfrozen moment’ – students are expecting change and so more likely at this stage accept radical change in approaches. The second large explosion is where there is a fundamental change in epistemologies (e.g. accounting and finance, not all about numbers, numbers sometimes lie), third smaller explosion is expectations of independent learning.
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3

12. Things to guard against
Variety in assessment is not always a good thing
“It is clear how disconcerting students find a large range of assessment activities. It is far better to limit these so students get better at using the feedback to improve performance.” (Gibbs, 2011)
“Some skills, literacies, conceptual understandings are ‘slowly learnt’ and need rehearsal throughout a programme” (Yorke, 2001)
Focus on reliability is not always a good thing
“This quest for reliability tends to skew assessment towards the assessment of simple and unambiguous achievements, and considerations of cost add to the skew away from judgements of complex learning’ (Knight 2002).
A declining use of deep and contextual approaches to study as students’ progress through their degree programmes
Watkins & Hattie, 1985; Kember et al, 1997; Zhang & Watkins, 2001).
Slowly learnt – academic skills but also practical skills

13. Developing assessment literacy: pre assessment
Students need to
know how to negotiate the assignment task
understand expectations
learn self efficacy to enable independence
Notes: (transparent purpose e.g link formative AfL and summative, design fit for purpose and engagement)
(rules and standards)

14. Assessment cycle Students Task brief and explicit criteria
Feedback provided
Students
Completion and
submission of work 14

15. Assessment standards are difficult
Assessment judgements rely on local, contextualised interpretations of quality underpinned by tacit understanding of ‘quality’ shared by members of an assessment community
(Knight, 2006)
A key issue in assessment is that students often do not understand what is a better piece of work and do not understand what is being asked of them particularly in terms of standards and criteria.
(O’Donovan et al., 2001)

16. Assessment standards are difficult
Assessors apply different interpretations of key words and phrases within written ‘standards’ (Saunders and Davis 1998; Ecclestone,2001, Webster et al., 2000)
Written specifications cannot be applied mechanistically, judgement is required (Bloxham 2009)
“Standards are not conceptualised as having an existence or relevance separately from the context of the teaching team, the course as it was taught and its current students” (Sadler 2005 p190)
Greater precision is inherently self defeating (O’Donovan et al 2004)

17. Coming to understand standards
Active student engagement
Passive student engagement
Informal activities and inputs
Formal activities and inputs
1. The Traditional Model – Tacit standards absorbed over relatively longer times informally and serendipitously
2. The ‘Dominant Logic’ Explicit Model Standards explicitly articulated (with limitations) and passively presented to students
3. The Social Constructivist Model Actively engaging students in formal processes to communicate tacit knowledge of standards
4. The ‘Cultivated’ Community of Practice Model
Tacit standards communicated through participation in informal knowledge exchange networks ‘seeded’ by specific activities.
The Past
The Future
(O’Donovan et al, 2008)

18. Developing assessment literacy - Pre assessment
Explicit Criteria
Active
engagement
with criteria
Active
engagement with feedback
Students
Completion and
submission of work
Rust C.,O’Donovan B. & Price M. (2005) 18

19. Developing assessment literacy - Assessment activity
Explicit Criteria
Active
engagement
with criteria
Active
engagement with feedback
Students
Completion and
submission of work
Rust C.,O’Donovan B. & Price M. (2005) 19

20. ‘in the act of production itself’ (Sadler, 1989, p121).
Assessment activity
Students must learn to and identify their performance gap for themselves
‘in the act of production itself’ (Sadler, 1989, p121).
Self assessment
Drafting and redrafting
Peer review
Peer assessment
Peer assisted learning

21. Developing assessment literacy: post assessment
Explicit Criteria
Active
engagement
with criteria
Active
engagement with feedback
Students
Completion and
submission of work
Rust C.,O’Donovan B. & Price M. (2005) 21

22. Feedback and assessment literacy: the need to engage
Clarity of purpose
Learning effectiveness (and student engagement) is strongly influenced by opportunity to apply feedback to future performance This relies on
ability to understand feedback (legibility and interpretation)
expectations of the utility of feedback
perception of self efficacy
The relational dimension of feedback is key to student engagement
Dialogue supports understanding and engagement
(Price et al 2010)

23. Satisfaction with feedback (recent study)
Multiple domains of influence e.g. task design, clarity of instruction and expectation, dialogue, evidence of assessor effort, personalisation, students’ epistemologies, resilience and beliefs. What students want differs between principle and practice (Winstone et al, 2015)

24. Feedback – the importance of what has gone before
Be clear about the purpose of the feedback ie what should students expect to get from it in particular instances.
Ensure students have had sufficient support in understanding task, criteria and standards to relate to the feedback provided.
Require students to self assess e.g. against generic/cohort feedback.
Model the process of feeding forward for the students.
Require students to demonstrate how they have used feedback in subsequent work.
123 leaflets

25. Beyond the programme: Assessment literacy and community
Staff
Assessment confidence (Handley et al 2013)
Acknowledging professional judgement
Discourse of assessment and feedback dialogue (Price 2005)

26. Beyond the programme: Assessment literacy and community
Students
Self evaluative ability, independent learning and employability (Boud, 2009)
Confidence and capability to participate in community.
Importance of interaction and participation in community (Astin, 1993; Gibbs, 2007)
Useful evaluation of experience (Price et al 2010)

27. Where do we go from here: develop assessment literacy
Supports student learning and performance.
Acknowledges the nature of standards and the role of professional judgement.
Allows students to go beyond rating the satisfaction with assessment and feedback. ‘service’ to evaluating the effect on their learning.
Puts assessment focus on learning.