The document discusses assessment and rubrics for a workshop on teaching and learning. It provides information on aligning assessment with learning outcomes, selecting appropriate assessment forms, justifying assessments, and creating rubrics. Assessment should measure what students have learned based on the intended outcomes and provide feedback. The document discusses formative and summative assessment, as well as reliability, validity, and different assessment methods. It also covers feedback, rubrics, and the assessment policy at UWC.

1. WORKSHOP ON TEACHING AND
LEARNING
ASSESSMENT & RUBRICS
MONT FLEUR
18 - 20 MARCH 2012

2. Outcomes
Participants should be able to:
2. align assessment with outcomes
3. select a range of assessment forms available
(and approved by UWC)
4. justify the choice of assessment forms
5. explain and defend marks and weightings
6. meet the criteria for reliability and validity
7. create appropriate rubrics

3. Assessment
 Assessment must be aligned with
learning outcomes and modular content.
(Constructive alignment – Biggs)
 Assessment provides students with
opportunities to show that they can do
what is set out in the learning outcomes.

4. The Purpose of Assessment
‘Assessment defines what students regard as
important, how they spend their time and how they
come to see themselves as individuals’
(Brown, 2001 in Irons 2008:11)
‘assessment is seen to exert a profound influence
on student learning: on what students focus their
attention on, on how much they study, on their
quality of engagement with learning tasks, and
through feedback, on their understanding and
future learning’.
(Gibbs & Simpson, 2004 in Irons, 2008:11)

5. Biggs: Assessment Tasks (ATs)
 provide students the opportunity to demonstrate
whether or not they have achieved the ILOs and what
level their performance is in those ILOs
 should be appropriately designed or selected to
address all the ILOs that we want to assess
 use different assessment methods (tasks) address
different ILOs. There should, therefore, be several kinds of
task.
 provide the evidence allowing teachers to make a
judgment about the level of a student’s performance
against the ILOs and to award a final grade.

6. Common ILOs Possible Assessment Tasks
(Bi
Describe essay question, exam, oral
presentation (peer assessment)
Explain assignment, essay question
exam, oral, letter-to-a-friend
Integrate project, assignment
Analyse case study, assignment
Apply project, case study, experiment
Solve problem case study, project, experiment
Design, create project, experiment
Reflect reflective diary, portfolio,
self-assessment
Communicate a range of oral, writing or
listening tasks, e.g. presentation,
debate, role play, reporting,
assignment, précis, paraphrasing,
answering questions etc.

7. Alignment
Graduate attributes
(What are the overarching attitudes, skills and dispositions for UWC students?)
↕
Learning Outcomes
(What do I want my students to be able to do?)
↕
Assessment Criteria
(What do I need to see to know they can do it?)
↕
Teaching and Learning Activities
(What will they be able to do, to know, how will their thinking and behaviour change as a result
of the teaching/learning experience?)
↕
Assessment Tasks
(How can I get them to show me those things?)
↕
Assessment Strategy
(How can all my tasks be ‘combined’ to fit the time and cover all outcomes?)
22/07/12

8.  Start with the outcomes we intend students to
learn (ILO), and align teaching and assessment
to those outcomes.
 Outcome statements contain a learning activity
(a verb) that students must perform to best
achieve the outcome.
 Learning is constructed by what students do,
not what we teachers do.
 Assessment concerns how well they achieve the
intended outcomes, not how well they report
back to us what we have told them.

9. (Source: Knight, 2001
www.heacademy.ac.uk)

10. Summative assessment
 This usually happens at end –
making a final judgement about
learning in relation to outcome
 It usually has a mark associated.
Assessment of learning.

11. Formative Assessment
Assessment for learning
used for diagnosis, growth and improvement
in student learning
 takes place during learning and can be
ongoing
feedback is important – time consuming so
should promote student responsiveness.
Electronic feedback sometimes more effective
as it cannot be ignored (Winberg, 2008)

12. Think about feedback in assessment
As a teacher:
 What type of feedback do you give?
 What happens with it?
 What would you like to see happen with it?
Cast your mind back to when you were a student …
 What types of feedback did you get as a student?
 What did you find helpful?
 What did you do with it?
Vardi, I (2009) Improving Student Writing with Effective
Feedback 2nd Annual SoTL Commons
Conferenceconference March 2009

13. Getting feedback… (Winberg, 2008)

14. Good feedback (Winberg, 2008)
 Facilitates the development of self-assessment in
learning (reflection)
 Encourages teacher-peer dialogue around learning
 Helps clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria,
expected standards)
 Provides opportunities to close the gap between current
and desired performance
 Delivers high quality information to students about their
learning (individual or general)
 Encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem
 Provides information to teachers that can be used to
shape the teaching
(from HEA guide Enhancing student learning through effective formative feedback,
p. 2)

15. Formal and informal assessment
 Formal - structure and awareness of both
lecturer and student that assessment is
occurring and how results are documented.
 Usually more structured and planned.
 Informal - spontaneous and not necessarily
documented e.g. suggestions for improvement
or revision, further drafts, learning activities to
elucidate if students grasp principles.

16. Reliability and validity
 Inter-rater reliability and intra-rater
reliability
 Content validity – how closely do
questions or assessment tasks relate to
content/concepts and learning outcomes
being assessed?

17. Traditional and alternative methods
 Traditional methods focus on the products of
learning rather than the process and is high
stakes; cumulative and summative; lecturer is
assessor
 Alternative methods use authentic situations;
focus on processes; use artifacts as evidence
of student thinking (e.g. portfolios, blogs,
podcasts, journals); are metacognitive; learning
progress and growth over extended period;
use self and peer assessment and feedback
(critical friends).

18. Norm- and Criterion-Referenced
Approaches to Assessment
 Norm – comparing students to others
in a group – bell curve

19. The UWC Assessment Policy
 Supporting student-centred learning –
encouragement of student responsibility for
own learning, within reason (e.g. workload)
 Assessment committees in each faculty
 Collegial engagement on assessment tasks
 Follow principles of good assessment
practices: transparency, clear ILO’s, etc.
 Use of formative and summative assessment
 Integrated assessment – theory and practice

20. Assessing by grading with rubrics
For:
 Student’s performance is appropriately assessed
against what they are intended to learn( -
criterion-referenced.
 The final grade tells students what they have
achieved and what they need for a better grade.
Against:
 Requires a different mind set for some teachers.
 Initially more work in designing ILOs, suitable
assessment tasks and rubrics, but once established
is no more extra work than marking.

21. What is a rubric?
 It is a scoring guide or a set of expectations used to
judge student performance. A rubric is a scoring
guide or a set of
expectations used to
judge student
performance.
Char
acteri
stics
are
arran
It shows students how well they have performed on an
ged
in
level

s,
indic
ating
the
degre
e to
whic
ha
stand
ard
has
been
met.
assignment.
It breaks the assignment into parts, using criteria and
Rubri

cs
are
espe
cially
usefu
l for
asse
ssing
comp
lex
and
subje
ctive
subje
cts.
levels of performance required for the assignment. They
provi
It can be used for a wide range of tasks (essays,
de
worki
ng

guide
s for
both
teach
ers
and
stude
nts
and
are
usual
ly
hand
ed
out
befor
e the
assig
nmen
t so
that
stude
nts
research projects, oral presentations, portfolios, etc.)
know
what
is
expe
cted.
 It is especially useful for assessing complex and
subjective subjects.
21

22. Why use rubrics?
 Learners know exactly what is expected; there are
clear targets and expectations.
 Rubrics protect against evaluator bias because they
are consistent.
 Rubrics evaluate on the sum of a full range of criteria
rather than a single numerical score.
 Rubrics empower students because they can use
them to develop their abilities.
 Rubrics can be created for any content area and can
be modified easily for various grade levels.

23. Parts of the rubric
A rubric is a grid made up of four basic parts:
a task description (the actual assignment which
involves performance expected of the student)
a scale of the levels of achievement (marks or
descriptions of levels of achievement)
the dimensions of the assignment (a breakdown of
the skills/knowledge involved in the assignment)
descriptions of what constitutes each level of
achievement (specific feedback)
07/22/12 Induction workshop for UWC staff 10 & 11 23
March 2010

24. Title
Task Description
Scale Level 1 Scale level 2 Scale level 3
Dimension 1
Dimension 2
Dimension 3
Dimension 4
07/22/12 Induction workshop for UWC staff 10 & 11 24
March 2010

25. Checklist for a good rubric:
____ Rubric Do the categories reflect the major learning
Categories objectives?
____ Levels Are there distinct levels which are assigned
names and mark values?
____ Criteria Are the descriptions clear? Are they on a
continuum and allowing for student growth?
____ Student-friendly Is the language clear and easy for students to
understand?
____ Teacher-friendly Is it easy for the teacher to use?
____ Validity Can the rubric be used to evaluate the work?
Can it be used for assessing needs? Can
students easily identify growth areas
needed?

26. References
 Butcher, C., Davies, C. & Highton, M. (2006). Designing Learning: From Module Outline
to Effective Teaching. London & New York: Routledge. Chapter 6, pp.93-129.
 Driscoll, A. & Wood, S. (2007) Developing Outcomes-based Assessment for Learner-
centred Education: A Faculty Introduction.Virginia:Stylus. Chapter 4
 Irons, A. (2008). Enhancing Learning Through Formative Assessment and Feedback.
London and New York: Routledge
 Knight, P. (2001). A briefing on key concepts: Formative and summative, criterion and
norm-referenced assessment. Assessment Series No. 7. Generic Network: Learning
and Teaching Support Centre
 Maki, P.L. (2004). Assessing for Learning:Building a Sustainable Commitment Across
the Institution. Sterling: Stylus. Chapter 5 119-152.
 McNamara, J. & Burton, K. (2009). Assessment of Online Discussion Forums for Law
Students. Journal of Teaching and Learning Practice.6(2): http://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp
(accessed 18 August, 2010).
 O’Donavon, B., Price, M. & Rust, C. (2004) Know what I mean? Enhancing student
understanding of assessment and criteria. Teaching in Higher Education, 9(3):325-335
 Stevens, D.D. & Levi, A.J. (2005). Introduction to Rubrics: An Assessment Tool to
Save Grading Time, Convey Effective Feedback, and Promote Student Learning.
Sterling: Stylus. Chapter 3, pp. 29-46.
07/22/12 Induction workshop for UWC staff 10 & 11 26
March 2010

28. Do we have a sense of
1. Assessment and alignment
2. Forms of assessment
3. Assessments and marks
4. Reliability and validity
5. Traditional and alternative assessment
6. Norm and criterion-referenced assessment
7. Rubrics?