Marks Should Not Be the Focus of Assessment – But How Can Change Be Achieved?

Authors

  • Darrall G Thompson University of Technology Sydney

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2016.32.9

Abstract

This paper attempts to address the possibility of real change after a hundred years of exam-based assessments that produce a single mark or grade as feedback on students’ progress and abilities. It uses design thinking and a reframing of the assessment space to foreground an attribute-based approach that retains the diversity of aspects of a student’s performance across subject boundaries. There are a number of rationales and concepts built into this approach that aim to divert staff and student focus from marks, content delivery, and retention, towards the development of knowledge literacies, conceptual frameworks, and a broad range of personal qualities and skills. Web-based software (REVIEW) developed and refined for more than a decade to facilitate this approach retains categorised student progress data through the day-to-day criterion-referenced marking of assignments and exams. Education research cited proposes that institutions should engage students as a partner in their personal and professional development rather than as a customer buying a degree. It is suggested and illustrated in this paper that the use of self-assessment and visual feedback on different categories of progress is part of the key to forming such a partnership.

Author Biography

Darrall G Thompson, University of Technology Sydney

Senior Lecturer, Learning Futures Fellow, School of Design, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building

References

Assiter, A. (Ed.). (1995). Transferable skills in higher education. London: Kogan Page.

BIHEC (2007) Business, Industry and Higher Education Collaboration Council. Graduate Employability skills report. Commonwealth of Australia, 2007, ISBN: 0 642 77701 2

Boud, D., Lawson, R., Thompson, DG. (2013). Does student engagement in self-assessment calibrate their judgement over time? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 38(8) 941-956. Routledge. UK.

Dorst, K. (2011) The core of ‘design thinking’ and its application, Design Studies, 32(6), 521-532,

Drew, S., Thorpe, L. and Bannister, P. (2002) Key skills computerised assessments, Guiding principles, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 27 (2), 175-186

Eisner, E.W. What can education learn from the arts about the practice of education? John Dewey Lecture 2002 http://www.infed.org/biblio/eisner_arts_and_the_practice_of_education.htm (accessed 7 Dec. 2011)

Higher Education Council (1992), Higher Education: Achieving Quality. October, 1992 AGPS Canberra

Kimbell, L. (2009) Beyond design thinking: Design-as-practice and designs-in-practice CRESC Conference (Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change), Manchester, September 2009

Lawson, B. (2005) How Designers Think. Architectural Press. 4th Ed. Elsevier. UK

Lomas, L. (2007) Are Students Customers? Perceptions of Academic Staff. Quality in Higher Education. 13(1)

Mayer, K. (1992) Key Competencies, Report to Ministers of VEET, AEC Australia

Owen, C. (2006) Design Thinking: Notes on Its Nature and Use Design Research Quarterly 1(2)

Pitman, T. (2000) Perceptions of Academics and Students as Customers: A survey of administrative staff in higher education. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 22(2)

Ramsden, P. (2008). The future of higher education teaching and the student experience. http://www.bis.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/HE-Teaching-Student-Experience.pdf (16.1.2015)

Razzouk & Shute, (2012). What is Design Thinking and Why is it Important? Review of Educational Research 82(3), 330–348

Sankey, M., & Lawrence, R. (2003). Suicide and risk-taking deaths of children and young people. New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People, Child Death Review Team, & Centre for Mental Health.

Thompson, D.G. (2009). Successful engagement in graduate attribute assessment using software, Campus-Wide Information Systems, (26) 5, 400-412

Wright, P. (1995). The Higher Education Quality Council, Quality Enhancement Group. Canberra, ACT

Downloads

Published

2016-09-17

How to Cite

Thompson, D. G. (2016). Marks Should Not Be the Focus of Assessment – But How Can Change Be Achieved?. Journal of Learning Analytics, 3(2), 193-212. https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2016.32.9

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 2 (2016): Multimodal and 21st Century Skills Learning Analytics and Datasets

Section

Special section: Learning Analytics for 21st Century Competencies

License

Copyright (c) 2016 Journal of Learning Analytics

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons License, Attribution - NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).