ABSTRACT
Assessment is a complex business. Why bother? Surely hardly assessing students, perhaps only through finals examinations, has powerful advantages? We reject that point of view, but it would be wrong not to consider it seriously. Having done that we shall outline problems with the criticisms and turn to our view that assessment is for learning. Criticisms first. If we assess infrequently and lightly:
it frees learners from the treadmill of continuous coursework, allowing them to read around the subject
consequently, it allows them to experiment and to play with ideas, to explore unpromising avenues and to follow intellectual curiosity
this would be more ‘life-like’ – after all, academics are not regularly assessed in this form. An academic article is the product of time, thought, research, reading and interest, has been through several drafts and has probably been enriched by peer criticism
continuous assessment leads to a regression to the mean – put another way, it is hard to sustain a first-class standard over many pieces of assessed work, easier to do so over fewer pieces
it encourages ‘surface’ approaches to learning. A not-too-clear distinction has been drawn between ‘deep’ and’ surface’ approaches to learning. Essentially ‘surface’ approaches involve memorization and reproduction above all. Learning theory says that understanding is not a prominent characteristic of these approaches, since understanding involves the act of reconciling the new information with existing knowledge. ‘Surface’ learning is seen as relatively passive. ‘Deep’ learning, on the other hand, involves a quest for understanding and involves an interaction with the new information, which is substantially reworked in the learning process. It has been said that this information will then be better remembered and that the learner will be more able to use and apply it, to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses and to see directions for further learning. ‘Deep’ learning is seen as an important goal of HE. Excessive assessment, especially where the assessments are clichéd, leads students to adopt surface learning as a coping strategy
it puts a premium on coverage of content at the expense of depth of understanding – superficial acquaintance is encouraged
assessments are often unreliable, hence arbitrary, and the range of assessment techniques which any student encounters is likely to be equally arbitrary
it is therefore counter-educational, fostering extrinsic motivation and dependency; discouraging self-assessment, responsibility and initiative; empowering lecturers, not students
it wastes an enormous amount of staff time
there are fears that the fiasco of National Curriculum assessment in schools may be exported to HE, using up scarce time, constraining the curriculum, encouraging didactic teaching, and leading to a bureaucratic jamboree of paperwork
it produces seemingly ‘hard’ data about student performance which are used as performance indicators, when in fact the data, coming from frequently invalid measures, and being an excessively simplified description of the results, are of very little value
because the system is ‘comfy’ and appears to work, it conceals the importance of thinking intelligently about the whole business of learning and teaching, perpetuating nineteenth-century practices as we enter the twenty-first century.
