Effective assessment strategies in law

Here Rob East of the University of Glamorgan outlines some of the principles of effective assessment, plus advice on how to give students feedback. Rob has also contributed definitions of formative and summative assessment and ideas for the innovative use of group, self and peer assessment to the site.

“Students can escape bad teaching; they can’t escape bad assessment.”

— (Boud (1995) in Race & Brown (2001) p30)

“Nothing that we do to, or for, our students is more important than our assessment of their work and the feedback we give them on it. The results of our assessment influence our students for the rest of their lives and careers – fine if we get it right, but unthinkable if we get it wrong.”

— (Race, Brown & Smith (2005) p.xi)

Purposes of assessment

Brown (2001) identifies three main purposes of assessment:

1. To give a licence to proceed to the next stage or graduation (certification).
2. To classify the performance of students in rank order (certification).
3. To improve their learning.

Certification:

• to pass or fail a student
• to grade or rank a student
• to license to practise
• to select for future courses
• to select for future employment

Learning:

• to provide feedback to students
• to motivate students
• to diagnose a student’s strengths and weaknesses
• to help students to develop their skills of self assessment
• to provide a profile of what a student has learnt

Quality assurance:

• to provide feedback to lecturers on student learning
• to improve teaching
• to evaluate a course’s strengths and weaknesses
• to assess the extent to which a programme has achieved its aim

(Mutch & Brown (2001) p5)

The Quality Assurance Agency’s Subject benchmark statement for Law (2000) provides a framework for law degree programmes that will assist with determining the balance between assessing legal knowledge and general transferable skills.

Features of effective assessment

Some of the key features of effective assessment include alignment, validity, reliability and transparency.

Alignment

There should be alignment between:

• clear and realistic learning outcomes
• learning opportunities to achieve these outcomes
• assessment methods and tasks related to the learning outcomes and methods of learning

Validity

Assessment should measure what it sets out to measure:

• an essay on the skills and techniques of the game of squash, for example, is not a valid test of how good a student is at playing squash
• consider what traditional end of module unseen examinations measure

Reliability

Assessment should be consistent and fair:

• good ‘inter assessor’ reliability – different markers agreeing on the same grade
• double marking – blind and seen
• use of marking schemes
• “It’s surprisingly difficult to achieve high levels of reliability…unless the assessment criteria…have been well discussed by all those involved in marking…” (Race & Brown (2001) p32)

Transparency

No ‘hidden agendas’ or surprises for students:

• students should not have to guess what is in the assessor’s mind
• assessment should be clearly aligned to published learning outcomes

Other features

Assessment should:

• motivate learners
• promote deep learning
• enable the demonstration of excellence
• be efficient and manageable

Problems with assessment

Common weaknesses in the day to day operation of assessment in higher education:

• lack of alignment – assessment does not match learning outcomes
• lack of validity, reliability or transparency
• overuse of one or two forms of assessment

In her pilot study of law schools Clegg comments that:

“…the variety of methods used in the sample are disappointing, utilising a very small proportion of the techniques available…The standard assessment…is an examination and one or two written pieces of coursework. In some departments, modules are assessed by 100% examination.”

— (Clegg (2004) p27)

“We just play safe.”

— (Clegg (2004) p32)

According to Brown (2001 p7) some of the most commonly encountered problems include:

• overload of students and staff
• insufficient time for students to do assignments
• insufficient time for staff to assess in an effective manner
• ‘bunching’ of assignments
• absence of well defined criteria/marking scheme
• inadequate, insufficient or improper feedback provided to students, for example in time-constrained written unseen end of module examinations
• variation in assessment demands of different modules
• assessment inhibits learning

Race & Brown (2001 p33) suggest that the need to make assessment fit for purpose is achieved by asking the following questions:

• What exactly are we setting out to measure with this element of assessment?
• Is the method of assessment used (essay, exam, etc) the best way facilitating students to demonstrate what is seeking to be measured?
• Is too much time and effort being spent on measuring things that are not really important?

For some interesting examples of innovative assessment that can improve ‘fitness for purpose’ see Race & Brown (2001 pp34-35) and Rust (2001 pp8-24).

Providing feedback to students

In order to give effective and meaningful feedback to students we should consider its purpose.

“The purpose of feedback is to give the learner the information she needs to do better next time.”

— (Bone (1999) p13)

“The purposes of feedback are to motivate students, to inform them how well they have done and how to improve.”

— (Brown (2001) p17)

Good feedback should be:

• timely – the sooner the better
• encouraging – use positive language, even when commenting on poor aspects of an assessment, and use the sandwich approach (some words to avoid – useless, disastrous, shows little effort – you may be wrong!)
• rational – feedback should be in line with clear marking criteria

Providing lengthy written feedback to a cohort of, say, 300 students, can be a time consuming exercise. Consider some of the following to reduce the load:

• provide feedback to groups of students – this can help students realise that they are not alone in making mistakes
• use statement banks of frequently repeated comments
• be selective, for example the best two out of three assignments to count
• issue model answers with marked work
• wordprocessed overall class reports can be used in conjunction with a class debriefing session
• codes written on students’ work – instead of individual comments, use a code (a number, symbol or letter) and compile a glossary of codes in Powerpoint to use in debriefing session
• online delivery – via a virtual learning environment (VLE)

For further reading on feedback see Rust (2001), Race & Brown (2001) pp36-41, and Race, Brown & Smith (2005) chapter 4.

References and further reading

• Bone A (1999) Ensuring successful assessment Coventry: UK Centre for Legal Education
• Boud D (1995) Enhancing learning through self assessment London: Kogan Page
• Brown G (2001) Assessment: a guide for lecturers York: LTSN Generic Centre
• Clegg K (2004) Playing safe: learning and teaching in undergraduate law Coventry: UK Centre for Legal Education
• Mutch A & Brown G (2001) Assessment: a guide for heads of departments York: LTSN Generic Centre
• Race P & Brown S (2001) Inspiring learning about teaching and assessment [The ILTA Guide] York: Institute of Learning and Teaching
• Race P, Brown S & Smith B (2005) (2nd ed) 500 tips on assessment London: Routledge Falmer
• Rust C (2001) A briefing on the assessment of large groups York: LTSN Generic Centre

Last Modified: 4 June 2010