The assessment matrix

Assessment for learning: guide for law teachers

This is part of a guide, compiled by Alison Bone (University of Brighton) and Karen Hinett (UKCLE) in 2002, providing an overview of the chief issues involved in assessment and how it affects learning and teaching in law.

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The idea of an assessment matrix is that you match the learning outcomes of a course of study to the assessments, ensuring that all learning outcomes are being assessed and that students are exposed to a variety of assessment methods which enable them to demonstrate their learning in different ways.

It is possible to be very general or quite specific in how learning outcomes are to be assessed. Below is an example of an assessment matrix for two courses in year 1, semester 1 on the LLB at Borchester University.

Legal Skills: learning outcomes

1. Undertake basic legal research involving the identification and location of legal source material.
2. State the relationship between different sources of law.
3. Identify basic legal phraseology and understand its meaning.
4. Communicate effectively in a variety of contexts.
5. Analyse the legal issues arising in a given factual situation and be able to explain in a logical manner the likely legal outcome.

Legal Skills: assessment

• legal source workbook (a workbook completed by the student involving a wide range of sources including statutes, statutory instruments, government papers,
  cases, leading textbooks, legal databases, webpages)
  individual (10%) LO 1-4

• written assignment (2000 words on how judge interpret law – final wording to be agreed) individual (40%) LO 2-4

• moot group (50%) LO 1-5

Public Law 1: learning outcomes

1. Identify the functions of government and discuss the role of a constitution in different poitico-legal contexts.
2. Explain how political institutions and processes work and evaluate them in the light of liberal democratic and other theoretical perspectives.
3. Communicate understanding of relevant legal rules and theory.
4. Analyse the content of specific legal rules which apply to public law situations and interpret given factual situations to determine whether they fall within the scope of such rules.
5. Participate effectively in the discussion of contemporary constitutional issues and, in doing so, demonstrate an appreciation of the importance of structured, coherent arguments based on the use of logic and credible concepts.

Public Law 1: assessment

• two hour closed book examination (100%)

The learning outcomes (LOs) for the legal skills course are in many ways underpinning the rest of the degree programme, and it would be expected that they would be picked up and developed in a subject specific way in many of the other courses undertaken.
Note how the assessment mechanism spells out not only the type of the assignment (workbook), but also how it relates to the learning outcomes. The written assignment relates to a specific learning outcome.

By way of contrast, it is very difficult to discover how the students are going to be assessed on their learning outcomes in the course on public law. Presumably LOs 1-4 could be covered in the examination, but what about LO 5? It may well be that students have regular seminars where there will be the opportunity for discussion, but as there is apparently no assessment of these how will the lecturer know if the outcome has been achieved? One possible way would be through the moot,assessed under Legal Skills, if all students are studying both courses simultaneously – there is no reason why assessments should not cross course boundaries in terms of learning outcomes.

The first issue may well be when assessment is to occur. Will it all be at the very end of the course (rare outside Oxbridge)? At the end of the academic year? At the end of the semester? At the end of the module? Many courses may have more than one assessment incident – one or more during the course for formative purposes – which may or may not be graded.

References

Last Modified: 4 June 2010