Fundamental assessment principles to support student learning

1. Assessment tasks should be designed to ensure that students spend their study time in productive ways: tasks should encourage ‘time on task’ (eg, in and outside class), should lead to a more even distribution of study effort (over the timeline of the course), should engage students in deep rather than surface learning and should communicate clear and high expectations (Gibbs and Simpson cited in Nicol, 2007).
2. Assessment feedback should be of sufficient quantity, timely, it should focus on learning not just marks (emphasize the learning aspects of assessment, that is learning elements are emphasized more than measurement ones), it should be related to assessment criteria and be understandable, attended to and actually used by students to make improvements in their work (ibid).
   

References:
Nicol, D. (2007). 'Laying a foundation for lifelong learning: case studies of technology-supported assessment in large first year classes'. British Journal of Educational Technology. 38.4, pp. 668-678.