What is Assessment for Learning?

 When done effectively, assessment can be a powerful way for students to learn and develop.

In an ideal world, students would know what they could – or should – usefully be doing to prepare for an assessment task (Clegg, 2019).

However, the reality is that students often find assessment to be confusing or stressful. This might be because they don’t have a clear sense of what the task requires, how best to approach it, or why they are being asked to do it in the first place. The list goes on!

Many believe that universities have a responsibility to support students to succeed in their assessments – after all, we want our students to achieve to the highest level and avoid failure where possible (Ajjawi & Dracup, 2020).

By understanding what assessment support students might need, we can consider how to develop our practice accordingly to help them succeed.

Your task

Given the above, what support do you feel students might need to understand and succeed in their assessments?

As a response to this question, add a few key words to this Answer Garden word cloud.

You might find it helpful to start by thinking back to your own experiences of assessment when you were a student.

References

_{Ajjawi, R. & Dracup, M. (2020, February 4). Failing a subject isn’t just the student’s fault: Universities can and should help. The Conversation. Web link}

_{Clegg, K. (2019, September 19). Four things new students need to know before tackling a university assessment. The Conversation. Web link}