L&T Blog T1 Week 7: Assessment in Practice

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! One of the key strands of the WA Way is Assess and Adapt. Assessment is an ongoing focus for us, following on from the work Rob has done in creating a WA assessment philosophy, and we look forward to building on this. As such, I was interested to see an Edutopia article focussed on this area.

Objectives: To understand and synthesise the best in current research on assessment practices.

Summary: 

• The article reminds us that grading practices are very embedded in the educational system, but that they are not sufficient on their own in improving student performance or motivation more widely.

• It states that the following assessment practices can be helpful in supporting better ongoing learning and motivation:

• 1) Giving written or verbal feedback before giving a grade. 

• 2) That frequent, low stakes assessment (including quizzing) is highly effective in improving learning outcomes.

• 3) That meaningful, well designed peer assessment is highly effective

• 4) That the use of rubrics in assessment can support in the elimination of unconscious bias - which is in and of itself important to improve outcomes for disadvantaged students or students of colour.  

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I currently using these best practices for assessment? How impactful have they been? How do I know?

• Which elements of my assessment practices do I want to work on? What support do I need for this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya