Demonstrating Quality Outcomes in Learning and Teaching: Examining ‘Best practice’ in the Use of Criterion-referenced Assessment

Australian universities are now required to meet a range of quality assurance indicators directly related to demonstrated excellence in learning and teaching, which are evaluated by the Commonwealth Government’s Learning and Teaching Performance Fund. Consequently, they must now develop ways to demonstrate attainment of these prescribed benchmarks. One pedagogical practice adopted by Australian universities, as a way of identifying and demonstrating stated learning outcomes, is the use of criterion-referenced assessment. Fundamentally, assessment criteria should do two things: first, they should clearly articulate the desired qualities or characteristics of students’ work that are relevant to the task being assessed; second, they should show the relationship between the stated learning objectives of a course and the type of assessment task being used. However, correctly applied, assessment criteria also potentially contribute to students’ learning by enabling them to develop a sense of judgement in relation to their own performance. They also potentially provide the means for articulating appropriate disciplinary standards at a course level. Yet the usefulness of assessment criteria is potentially undermined by issues such as vagueness, confusion over the relationship between criteria and standards, a lack of consensus over the interpretation of criteria within teaching teams and disciplines and the challenge of articulating desirable qualities for assessment tasks that require complex, higher order thinking. This paper addresses these issues by reviewing relevant higher education literature and proposing six principles of good practice for the use of criterion-referenced assessment.