Developing an assessment strategy

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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Starting at course or module level it is relatively easy to develop a learning strategy, as long as there are clear learning outcomes.

When considering the various elements of course or module design the most sensible ordering is:

• learning outcomes
• assessment tasks
• subject content

Unfortunately it is not enough to look just at individual subjects. At one time we might have thought that our approach to teaching and assessing (for example) contract law at level one on an undergraduate programme should be similar whatever the nature of the degree, but recent work on graduate standards illustrates the importance of typology.

Those who are taking a specialist law degree will require a different focus from those taking law as part of a combined degree, or as a subsidiary, or from those studying law for the purposes of the Common Professional Examination (CPE).

Obviously all require a knowledge of legal rules and principles, but at what sort of level will they need to be able to apply and synthesise these rules? What about teamworking and communication? Is research ability equally important for all?

The key to these different approaches is the nature of the assessment which can develop and evaluate all these different perspectives as appropriate.

Assessment strategies are best dealt with at award team level, ie the course team responsible for the subject devises a strategy which will be common, as far as possible, for all students achieving that award.

What are the purposes of assignments?

• to develop student learning in the core areas contained in the programme
• to stimulate the student’s analytical, critical and evaluative faculties
• to encourage students’ reflective abilities and to see the programme in terms of ‘added value’ in reciprocal terms, i.e. what they can contribute to the course and fellow students on it, and what the course adds to their personal and potential professional development.
• to promote practical skills in written communications, particularly in the systematic presentation of written materials using clearly referenced legal sources
• to promote interpersonal skills in key areas such as informing, persuading and negotiating
• to assist students in preparing thoroughly and systematically for the kinds of issues and questions encountered in other assessment mechanisms
• to help prepare students for a career which is likely to involve teamworking

Some ingredients of a good assignment strategy

• it should be made clear which assignments are testing breadth of knowledge and which depth
• contextual aspects should be used occasionally to encourage corporate/organisational as well as individual/personal perspectives
• data collection and simple original research should be nurtured from an early stage
• description alone should never be the main focus of any assessed work at undergraduate level
• criteria should encourage the use of a wide range of sources, including the Internet
• assignment topics should as far as possible be distributed at the beginning of the course, together with the hand-in date and the date they will be returned to students

The student doing your course or module is likely to be studying other courses as well, and it is important that you gain an insight into the assessment mechanisms being used by other lecturers. Ideally the course or year team should spend some time planning the year’s assessment in advance to see at which stage the students will be required to do which assessments.

This is sometimes done by circulating a calendar where lecturers put in their hand-in dates but this is merely brushing the surface. It ensures the students are not being grossly overworked at one time of the year with comparatively little to do at another, but it does not address the student experience. The best way to do this is by way of the assessment matrix within the context of an assessment strategy.

References

Last Modified: 4 June 2010