Choosing the right assessment method for the job
To assess different types of learning, or achievement, you need to use different types of assessment method. Not all methods may be fit for your purpose.
So, to get this right for the learner, you need to be clear about the following.
- What type of learning you want to assess — is it knowledge, skill, creative thinking and so on?
- Who your learners are and what they are likely to find:
- useful
- interesting
- valuable; and
- challenging, but non-threatening.
- What would work best in your subject or discipline.
- Whether or not it would be helpful to involve others, for example, peers, friends or family in the assessment process. (If you decide to do this, though, they need to be clear about what's being asked of them.)
On accredited courses you need to match your assessment methods to what learners have to do to meet Awarding Bodies' requirements for particular qualifications and take care not to jeopardise learners' chances by using inappropriate strategies.
Many of the resources provided on this website can be used either to help learners advance their learning or to check what they've already learned. The difference lies in how you use them and in what you expect of learners. For example:
- when you teach, you introduce something new to be learned; when you assess, you don't; and
- when you teach, you provide a lot of support and guidance for learners; when you assess, you provide less.
You might be tempted to measure distance travelled by giving learners the same task at the beginning and end of their course. However, this is more likely to be a test of memory than a test of learning. Changing the context of the activity, or reconfiguring it, is likely to show more clearly how learners can now apply their learning.
If you are a Subject Learning Coach, use the CPD activities on assessment to help your colleagues expand their repertoire of approaches.