3D assessment: Looking through a learning lens

Abstract

Assessment is used almost universally as a means of measuring aspects of student learning in order to sort students into classifications of achievement and provide data with which to compare students with each other and with standards of performance. Its use as a learning tool is not so widespread or understood, in spite of the literature that demonstrates the potential for positive learning outcomes from particular types of assessment processes. It is well known that assessment is one of the driving forces governing how students learn. Assessment influences not just what students will learn, but how they will go about that learning and the nature of the learning itself. The most common form of assessment in higher education is assessment by staff, a highly effective process when the accuracy of knowledge of content needs to be tested. But the accumulation of knowledge and skills is no longer the only goal of an education that takes the certainty of change into account. Graduates now need to be prepared for independent, self-directed and self-monitored learning for the long term if they are to adapt successfully to the changes they will encounter throughout their lifetimes. It is now widely accepted that a broad range of positive learning outcomes result when students are involved in the assessment of their work and the work of their peers. Self-assessment and assessment by peers have been employed with increasing frequency since the early 1990's, particularly in formative assessment. After considering some of the literature on assessment, this paper describes a higher education music course in which three dimensions of assessment are used; in addition to the traditional assessing by staff, both self-assessment and assessment by peers are applied to recorded creative work. Students learn as active participants in the assessment process rather than merely being those to whom assessment is done in order to sort them into categories or ranking schemes.