ABSTRACT
As Boud argues: if you get the assessment right, you are likely to direct students’ activities appropriately. Students gain cues about what you value from the assignments/tasks you set and will direct their out-of-class learning activities accordingly. If we focus the tasks we set them on recall and memorisation, that’s what they’ll do! If, however, we want to encourage them to take a deep rather than a surface approach to the development of practical skills, we need to design practical assignments intelligently.We need to think not just about the assessment criteria but also about weighting, timing, agency and ‘fitness for purpose’, with imaginative consideration of methods and approaches that can challenge students, be inclusive and suit the topic, context, cohort and level. Practical assessments should link clearly to the most sensible evidence of practical skill our students could produce to demonstrate their achievement of the intended outcome. Essential to all forms of assessment is clarity about criteria, and this is particularly the case when the assessor is considering the extent to which practical skills have been satisfactorily demonstrated.
