Tasks > Learner contribution

There are many ways in which learners can be involved in assessment processes beyond their obvious role in responding to assessment tasks. Learners might design aspects of an assessment task, provide feedback to peers on draft or final work, use the assessment to develop resources for other learners’ information, give presentations on topics that are vital to their fellow students’ learning, or suggest how an assessment task could be improved for the following cohort of learners. Involving learners in such ways can increase their sense of responsibility, improve the quality of their work, and provide important information for enhancing assessment practices.

Assessment considerations:

  • Which aspects of the assessment process lend themselves to more involvement by your learners, e.g. selecting or creating their own assignment topics, providing peer feedback, acting as an audience for presentations, or creating resources for future use?
  • How can peer feedback be designed creatively to engage your learners in improving their own and others’ work and knowledge?
  • How might assessment tasks be used to generate artefacts for your future teaching?
  • How might assessment tasks be used to generate resources for the benefit of your current learners?
  • If your students are making oral presentations to the class, how can this be made into a genuine learning experience for the whole class?
  • How can you collect high quality feedback from your learners on the assessment tasks in order to improve these tasks for your next cohort?

Also refer to:

Tasks > Activities which drive learning

Educator experiences

Peer review

With large classes of 700–800, the only way to solve the need for more feedback was by implementing peer review. We allowed the students to upload a draft of their essay into the learning management system and then it was sent anonymously to three people. We told the students that they would get feedback from peers, or from a member of staff. Even on that large scale, students were very constructive in helping each other and the students found that they were really getting quite significant feedback from each other. Most people found that it was a very rewarding experience. It had the effect, obviously, of inflating marks because quite clearly, they wrote better essays. – History lecturer

Incorporating student work into assessment design

I guess there’s always an unknown. When it’s the first time you do something that’s new, you don’t know how effective or useful it’s going to be. So, that is an important part of the process, to sit down after the experience and think, “Well, okay, what happened there?” I consult with my students, I let them know, “This is the first time we’ve done this … So, it would be good to get your feedback on how you see the effectiveness of it, the clarity, etc.” I use Google forms in the last lesson to survey all the students because their feedback is important in shaping the future versions of the assessment task. – Education lecturer

Assessment products for future learning

A student performing these skills well and videoing themselves doing it for the assessment task, was as good a teaching resource as if I had recorded myself performing that skill. So their submissions are purposely used as teaching resources. Not only does it mean the students can learn from their peers, these video resources will help us facilitate the transition to our curriculum being online. – Health professions lecturer

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