Support for assessment practice: developing the Assessment Design Decisions Framework

ABSTRACT

There are many excellent publications outlining features of assessment and feedback design in higher education. However, university educators often find these ideas challenging to realise in practice, as much of the literature focuses on institutional change rather than supporting academics. This paper describes the conceptual development of a practical framework designed to stimulate educators’ thinking when creating or modifying assessments. We explain the concepts that underpin this practical support, including the notions of ‘assessment decisions’ and ‘assessment design phases’, as informed by relevant literature and empirical data. We also present the outcome of this work. The Assessment Design Decisions Framework. This provides key considerations in six categories: purposes, contexts, tasks, interactions, feedback processes and learning outcomes. By tracing the development of the Framework, we highlight complex ways of thinking about assessment that are relevant to those who design and deliver assessment to tertiary students.

KEYWORDS:

• Assessment
• higher education
• educational design
• decision-making
• feedback

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to Associate Professor Gordon Joughin for his thoughts on drafts of this manuscript. Support for this publication has been provided by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. The views in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Office of Learning and Teaching [ID12–2254].