Active assessment literacy
Aimee Merrydew and Matt East
What is the idea?
A common challenge across the higher education (HE) sector relates to assessment, especially students’ understanding of the specifics around assessed activity. Drawing on interdisciplinary case studies, this chapter explores the role of collaborative analysis and annotation practices in helping students to develop assessment literacies. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates that collaborative annotation can be a powerful tool for improving students’ knowledge and understanding of assessment requirements, extending across past submission analysis, research proposals, and ethics submissions. Talis Elevate, a collaborative annotation tool, is the platform used to facilitate assessment literacy activities in this example, but the idea can be applied using various technologies.
Why this idea?
Assessment literacy is critical for several reasons. Assessments are integral to HE since they are often used to assure academic and professional standards, measure whether learning outcomes have been achieved, and determine students’ degree classifications (McConlogue, 2020). Assessments are also tools for learning that help students to identify their strengths and areas for development, promoting critical reflection that will serve them well during and beyond university (Carless & Boud, 2018; Sambell, McDowell, et al., 2012). Yet many students struggle to understand assessment criteria or why assessments matter for their learning beyond the attainment of grades, creating dissatisfaction with assessments and causing frustration when expectations and desired outcomes are not achieved (Sambell, Brown, et al., 2017; Winstone & Boud, 2021). At the same time, educators might assume students understand assessment criteria and miss opportunities to embed assessment literacies into course design, impacting students who are unfamiliar with assessment activities, processes, and expectations.
Collaborative annotation offers many pedagogical potentials regarding academic skills development. Cohn (2020) addresses several educational opportunities that arise from collaborative digital reading and annotation activities, such as developing shared understandings of the syllabus via annotation. Chen et al. (2010) explored collaborative annotation tools to correct misunderstandings of assessment activity, create shared understandings of assessment criteria, and identify writing errors, demonstrating impact not only on students’ assessment literacy but also general reading comprehension.
Despite these opportunities, the possibility for collaborative annotation to build assessment literacies is not widely researched. In what follows, we outline an activity with step-by-step instructions you can use to develop students’ assessment literacies. The activity is intended to create meaningful learning experiences through which students are empowered to reach their full potential in assessments.
How could others impl