How assessment frames student learning

Students are strategic as never before, and they allocate their time and focus their attention on what they believe will be assessed and what they believe will gain good grades. Assessment frames learning, creates learning activity and orients all aspects of learning behaviour. In many courses it has more impact on learning than does teaching. Testing can be reliable, and even valid, and yet measure only the trivial and distorted learning which is an inevitable consequence of the nature of the testing. This chapter is not about testing but about how assessment leads to effective study activity and worthwhile learning outcomes. It starts by quoting students describing how they respond to perceived assessment demands. It then outlines eleven ‘conditions under which assessment supports learning’. These conditions are based on a review of theoretical literature on formative assessment and on a review of published accounts of successful innovations in assessment, across all discipline areas, undertaken in order to identify why they were successful. Economical assessment methods are described that meet these conditions, each based on published evidence of worthwhile impact on learning and student performance. Associated diagnostic tools have been developed to help faculty to identify how their students respond to their assessment regime, and some uses of these tools will be described. The chapter is intended to provide a conceptual underpinning to the innovations in assessment described elsewhere in this volume.