The importance of clarity in written assessment instructions

ABSTRACT

Much of the contemporary literature around assessment practices in higher education focuses on assessment quality and its fitness for purpose. However, there is limited research around student comprehension of written assessment task descriptions and their understanding of the task itself. The purpose of this study was to examine a number of assessment task descriptions in a higher education institution to ascertain their degree of readability, which is key to student understanding of the assessment task. Three readability indexes were used to assess the readability of assessment task descriptions across 37 large-enrolment higher education units. It was found that the readability of the assessment task descriptions of 20 of the 37 units was poor. This study found a statistically significant correlation between the readability of assessment task descriptions and student satisfaction in post-unit evaluation surveys. No correlation was found between assessment task readability and student success. Student satisfaction for units where the readability of assessment tasks was good, scored higher on average than units where the readability was poor. The implications of this study suggest that universities need to pay more attention to ensuring that assessment task descriptions are understandable by the target audience.

KEYWORDS:

• Readability
• higher education
• assessment
• quality assessment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sherre Roy

Sherre Roy is a lecturer with the Learning and Teaching Services unit at CQUniversity. Her research areas of interest are personalised learning, educational technologies and learning analytics in the context of providing efficient and effective support for teaching staff.

Colin Beer

Colin Beer is a Lecturer, Educational Technology within Learning and Teaching Services at CQUniversity. Colin’s educational development duties mean that he works with a large number of academic and professional staff across the university on a daily basis. This exposure to a range of learning, teaching and technical contexts affords Colin a broad perspective on how technology can be harnessed to benefit student outcomes at CQUniversity. Colin, currently pursuing a PhD, has many refereed publications and has presented his work to forums in Australia and New Zealand.

Celeste Lawson

Celeste Lawson is the Head of CQUniversity’s Professional Communication programme. She has extensive practical experience in journalism and policing. She currently researches in social media, communication and public relations, with a focus on pedagogy and learning.