INTRODUCTION
Education is a collaborative activity, involving activity by both the educator and the learner. Assessment is the same, there are roles and responsibilities for both the person setting the assessment and the person undertaking it. Therefore it is important that assessment should be seen as a joint responsibility of educators and students.
A key point made in the EAT Framework is summarised in this quote:
“How students come to co-own their programmes with educators and see themselves as active contributors to the assessment feedback process rather than seeing assessment as something that is done to them is imperative” (Evans, 2016, p. 2).
The roles and responsibilities of educators and learners need to be clear and explicit from the outset. Understanding and agreeing on student/staff roles/responsibilities is central to understanding of autonomy and agency in assessment.
For instance:
– To what extent is there an expectation of key materials to be delivered by either the assessment setter, or the student?
– To what extent will support and guidance be provided, and when
– How will this support then be removed so that the student can show their own mastery of the skills/understanding being assessed?
– Is there the potential for co-production, co-authorship, co-assessment?
The clarification of these boundaries highlights the importance of beliefs and values about what one’s role in assessment is. When considering effective assessment practices, it is important from educator and student perspectives to surface these tensions at the start.
This module will look at the different roles and responsibilities of educators and students in the assessment process, and highlight areas where it is important to clarify the boundaries. This is essential both in terms of setting the assessment, undertaking the assessment, supporting learners with formative feedback, and managing workloads for both students and educators.
STUDENT ENTITLEMENT IN ASSESSMENT
Student engagement in assessment impacts student success (Kuh, O’Donnell, & Schneider, 2017). When students are actively engaged with activities, and see some level of partnership and ‘buy-in’ to the learning or assessment activity, then they are more likely to see themselves as empowered, and as actively engaged agents, not passive consumers of learning.
Students who view themselves as agentic are more likely to focus on the task, and be interested in its completion. They are likely to spend more quality time on task, and show deeper learning as a result.
It is important to consider where the active role begins and ends for either the parties involved in an assessment. This will differ between disciplines, student ages/levels, teaching approaches, and the ‘teaching philosophy’ of the educator.
Before looking at clarifying entitlements of students, it would first be useful to reflect on your own perceptions of the roles and responsibilities of staff and students in the assessment process.
What do you think should be the role of staff and students in assessment and feedback processes?
Activity: Download this document and make some notes in the table, summarising your opinion of the relative actions/activities required and the responsibilities for the assessment learning process, by students and educators respectively.
A suggested example of each is provided to get you started.
Having reflected on these activities and responsibilities, now think about these questions relative to your guidance documents for assessments:
· How explicit are you about what support students are entitled to?
· Where is this communicated clearly.
More broadly for your course/module:
· What are your expectations of students coming onto your course/module/programme?
· What would you say is the extent of student engagement in assessment in your course/module/programme?
In supporting students to self-manage their assessment journeys it is important to make it clear what support is available and when, what the boundaries of support are, and what the student role in assessment is.
The student role in supporting the learning process should be stressed, in contributing to assessment design and research, and as active feedback givers as well as receivers of feedback.
Before we consider the concept of student entitlement in assessment, it is important to consider the various perspectives underpinning what assessment is, relative to the learning process.
Activity: Play the video which discusses some of these perspectives.
REFLECTION ACTIVITY
Do your students typically view assessment as OF learning (i.e. assessment for an outcome), or do they see assessment FOR/AS learning (i.e. assessment as a means of supporting learning)?
To what extent do you think they believe that assessment IS learning?
Thinking of students with whom you supervise or work; what do students perceive their roles and responsibilities in assessment to be?
What are the challenges/barriers and affordances/opportunities of your answer to the previous question for how you address roles and responsibilities in assessment with your students?