Overview

The purpose of assessment explanation is to help students understand what they need to learn and how they can demonstrate their learning through the assessment tasks they are given. The goal is to provide students with explicit and transparent information about what they need to learn.

Assessment Briefs at the University of Bedfordshire

The assessment brief should clearly articulate the assessment task and requirements, the threshold expectations, how the task links to the learning on the unit and should include the assessment criteria which staff will use to mark the work. At the University of Bedfordshire, this is primarily achieved through the use of assessment briefs. The University of Bedfordshire uses standard assessment brief templates (available via Academy document library).

Assessment criteria

University assessment policy on assessment criteria recommends that the criteria have the following features:

• Relate to only one academic level. The required standards should increase from level to level as student progress through their degree.
  
  
• Typically include three to five criteria. Having more than five criteria makes it both difficult for students to understand and more challenging to mark.
  
  
• The use of terms such as excellent, good etc is not sufficient to explicitly differentiate levels of performance. Try to write criteria where there is a specific, qualitative difference between grade boundaries. For example, instead of ‘excellent reflection’ the criteria could be ‘reflection is insightful, has depth and considers alternative perspectives.’
  
  

Creating a shared understanding of the assessment criteria for tutors and students is essential for fairness and consistency. It is not always possible to make explicit in the criteria the tacit knowledge required for students to do well (Bearman and Ajjawi, 2018). This is why it is important to conduct the assessment exercise during the unit so that students have a chance to ask questions and better understand the assessment task and criteria. Here is a short video that illustrates an example of an academic explaining the assessment as part of the assessment exercise.