Term | How it is used in this section |
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Assessment | Refers to when one or more people judge how well a completed task meets specific criteria. This can include self-assessment, peer-assessment and assessment performed by staff. In ‘for completion’ assessment, the only criteria for assessment is whether or not the task has been completed; the quality of completion is not judged. |
Assignment | Refers to any task completed outside of contact hours such as reflective projects, essays, or journals. These may or may not be assessed. |
Activity | Refers to any task completed during contact hours such as reflective discussions, group work, journal writing, or presentations. These may or may not be assessed. |
Criteria and rubrics can help you in your assessment
As highlighted on the ‘Should I assess?’ page, different levels of assessment will either require or benefit from explicit criteria and rubrics. They will help you in your assessment and will particularly support the reflectors when producing their reflections. Moreover if you decide to use peer or self-assessment, criteria and rubrics will be of great help as part of the guidelines students should be given for the assessment process.
Should I assess? (within the Facilitators’ Toolkit)
Assessment types that work well for reflective assignments
Reflective assignments lend themselves well to most types of assessment.
Classic summative assessment
In contrast to reflective activities, reflective assignments work particularly well for summative assessments that might carry high proportions of the overall course marks. This would be similar to a final essay in a course.
For example, this could be:
- A reflective journal
- A report that pulls on evidence from a reflective journal
- A reflective blog
- A reflective essay on the student’s development in the course
- A reflective essay on meeting benchmark statements
- A reflective essay on a particular experience (for example a critical incident in an experiential learning course)
- A skills-development log
Peer-assessment can be used, but summative assessment might lend itself better to assessment from tutors or course organisers. While it is strictly possible, self-assessment might not suit summative work and it is recommended to use for formative work instead.
Summative assessment performed by: | Pros | Cons |
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Course organiser (tutors) |
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Peer-assessed |
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Summative assessments are high-stakes assessment. It is therefore important that students receive support on how to reflect and perform well. For instance, having a chance to practice in a low-stakes environment such as formative assessment can be valuable.
Formative assessment
Reflection is an excellent way of checking-in partway through an initiative and supporting students with their further development. Any kind of formative assessment is a valuable way of practising for a summative assignment and therefore smaller or interim versions of final assessments are great for formative feedback.
For example, this could be:
- Individual entries from a reflective journal
- A reflective blogpost
- Interim essays on development during the course or on benchmark statements
- Drafts on reflective summative assessments
- Reflective workbooks
As mentioned, formative assessment is low-stakes and can be a good way of engaging either peers or students themselves in the assessment process.
Formative assessment performed by: | Pros | Cons |
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Course organiser (tutors) |
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Peer-assessed |
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Self-assessed |
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For completion or pass/fail
Reflective assignments can easily be implemented ‘for completion’ or ‘pass/fail’. Including reflection ‘for completion’ will ensure that students start the process, but not necessarily engage with it fully. By creating a ‘pass/fail’ option you ensure that students will engage at least to the point of ‘good enough’ with the reflective process.
Types of reflective assignments that can work well ‘for completion’ or ‘pass/fail’:
- Reflective journals/diaries
- Reflective workbooks
- Skills-development logs
- Reflective videos/audio recordings
While ‘pass/fail’ of assessment is lower stakes than many other forms of summative assessments and ‘for completion’ is generally very low stakes, you still have the responsibility of ensuring that students have enough information on how to complete the assignment satisfactorily. For ‘pass/fail’, just like any other summative assessment, it means having both criteria and a rubric.
Conclusion
When assessing reflective assignments it is essential to have clear guidelines and criteria. The higher the stakes of the assessment (for example summative versus formative), the more important clear guidelines and rubrics become.
You can use both formative and summative assessment for reflective assignments. When posing a summative assessments it is important to allow students to practise or you must be extremely clear about what you want and provide detailed guidance.
Reflective assignments lend themselves better to summative assessment than activities do.
Where next?
To get a sense of typical assessment criteria to include when assessing reflection, head to the assessment criteria page. For sample rubrics, see the rubrics page.
Assessment criteria (within the Facilitators’ Toolkit)
Assessment rubrics (within the Facilitators’ Toolkit)