Assessment challenges

Assessment carries negative overtones and perceptions
Assessment seems to have a negative image amongst many academics (e.g. concerns about the pernicious influences of assessment as accountability; a perception of assessment as a difficult and problematic field; heavy marking loads), while many of them simply equate assessment with grading or measurement (Carless,2007). Unfortunately, staffs’ views of assessment are sometimes relatively entrenched (Liu cited in Carless, 2007).


Low assessment awareness among teachers
Keppel and Carless (2006) suggest that teachers in training need to undergo some form of engagement with alternative approaches to assessment, so as trainee teachers can themselves experience their impact and raise their awareness of assessment as a learning process.

It is difficult to reform assessment in a curriculum
Attempts to introduce more diversified forms of assessment have shown that, in the school sector, assessment is the curriculum component that seems most difficult to reform (Morris et al., cited in Keppel and Carless, 2006). Potential barriers may rise from teachers’ existing beliefs (when they are not congruent with the assessment elements being promoted) (Carless cited in Keppel and Carless, 2006), institutional quality assurance guidelines (Carless, 2007), etc.

assessment fails to develop higher order outcomes
Students are oriented towards assessment which values rote learning and the accumulation of marks rather than deep understanding. (Watkins cited in Keppel and Carless, 2006). Indeed, examinations or one-off end of module assignments often fail to promote learning dispositions (Keppel and Carless, 2006).

Assessment feedback usually comes too late
It is rather common for students to receive most of their feedback after a module is completed. Unfortunately, then there is minimal possibility of it being acted upon or use it effectively.


Individual contribution in a group project and peer grading
There seems to be no consensus among learners about individual grading in a group project.
In a case-study conducted by Keppel and Carless (2006):
35% of students were unsure about whether or not their individual contribution to a group project should be graded while 57.5% suggested that their individual contribution to the project should be graded.
Contrarily, it seems that most (72.5%) of the learners feel that it would be acceptable to grade other members of their group in relation to their contribution to the group project.


Students’ conceptions about feedback may lower its efficiency
Keppel and Carless (2006) suggest that students may view teacher feedback as the only valid
form of feedback, discounting peer feedback, or may think of feedback as being individual formal written comments rather than verbal advice within teaching sessions.


Assessment preferences of pragmatic students
Although alternative and innovative methods of assessment can lead to productive learning experiences, a pragmatic student may prefer a more traditional one-off end of module assignment which involves less time and effort. These methods may indeed impose higher workload and thus they require from students to buy into the approach. (Keppel and Carless, 2006)

grades a tool for teachers at the expense of students and education
Grades offer teachers a convenient device for allaying their anxieties about their own abilities by shifting them onto their students, through an endless round of tests, examinations, and evaluations. Grades get teachers off the hook; they preserve professorial authority and are indifferent to professorial incompetence. Bad-faith protestations about administration requirements can mask the fact that grades serve the teacher at the expense of the students, and at the sacrifice of education. (copied from Noble)

End of year examinations are poor predictors of subsequent performance
Examinations are very poor predictors of any subsequent performance, such as success at work. A review of 150 studies of the relationship between exam results and a wide range of adult achievement found the relationship to be, at best, slight (Baird cited in Gibbs and Simpson, 2004-5). Contrarily, coursework marks are a better predictor of long term learning of course content than are exams. Presumably the kind of learning that coursework involves has long term consequences while the kind of learning involved in revision for exams does not (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004-5).

Grades have a negative impact on students’ self-efficacy
A grade is likely to be perceived by the student as indicating their personal ability or worth as a person as it is usually ‘norm-referenced’ and tells you, primarily, where you stand in relation to others. A poor grade may damage a student’s ‘self-efficacy’, or sense of ability to be effective. Moreover, In the absence of marks it has been reported that students read feedback much more carefully (Black & Wiliam cited in (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004-5) and use it to guide their learning (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004-5).

Assessment is judgement and it might abuse students
Learning is an act which necessarily leaves the student vulnerable while teachers usually judge too much and too powerfully, not realising the extent to which students experience their power over them (Boud, 1995). Teachers ‘must inevitably look at the profile of assessment as students see it’ (Boud, 1995, p.5). One who conducts an assessment to his trainees should undergo a similar experience, now and then, in order to keep in mind the stressful feelings it often induces.


References:

Boud, D. (1995). Assessment and learning: contradictory or complementary. In: Knight, P. ed. Assessment for Learning in Higher Education. London: Kogan Page/SEDA. pp. 35-48.

Carless, D. (2007). Learning-oriented assessment: conceptual bases and practical implications. Innovations in Education and Teaching International 44.1, pp. 57–66.

Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2004-5). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1, pp.3-31.

Keppel, M. and Carless, D. (2006). Learning-oriented assessment: a technology-based case study. Assessment in Education, 13.2, pp. 179-191.

Noble, D. May 2007: Giving Up the Grade. Ending grading frees academia, reintroduces education.
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/may-2007-giving-grade