Writing assessment tasks

Develop assessment tasks that are of high quality, are clear for students, and maintain academic integrity.

Ensure clairty and quality

Learn how to write assessments that support students to understand what is required of them, and maintains quality.
Design assessment for academic integrity

Learn how to design assessments for academic integrity, build authenticity into tasks, scaffold understanding of assessment, scaffold understanding of assessment, and target assessment security.

Supporting your students View

Given the variety of assessment tasks students will complete over the course of their university experience, ensuring they understand the requirements of the task and are well prepared for assessment is necessary. There are several steps you can take to ensure students are well supported before an assessment, and other supports at the university to help them understand the tasks they need to complete during the assessment.

How to support your students

Anticipate common assessment questions and develop FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) pages, or provide a video answering these.

Explain the purpose of the assessment task - why you have set it, and how it contributes to the students’ learning.

Clarify the connections between the assessment task and the learning outcomes

Identify the evidence you are looking for in the assessment

Educate students about how you will evaluate their performance in this task by discussing the criteria for assessment, and the rubric or marking guide.

Identify how the assessment task helps students to build skill sets that are relevant outside of the unit, for example, in the community, a workplace or industry context.

Create opportunities for students to ask further questions about the assessment, via forums, staff consultation or in-class Q&A time.

What resources and services are available to students

Here are a number of resources that you can share with your students to help them better prepare for their assessments.

Learn HQ: Understand assessments

Suite of resources that support students' approach to different assessment types, reinforce principles of academic integrity, and introduce examples and annotated assessments from a range of disciplines.

Learn HQ: Write like a pro

This page is the landing page of the Learn HQ writing resources. It includes resources on major academic writing genres and key assignment tasks for students from different faculties.

Student Academic Success: Individual consultants with learning advisers

Share this link with students so that they can book in with a learning adviser to gain personal support on how to prepare for timed assessments.

Student Academic Success: Academic English

Share this link so that students can obtain support around academic English usage. This will improve their academic writing to help reduce any unintentional breaches of academic integrity.

Health and wellbeing: Counselling service

Share this link for counselling services so that students can obtain additional support around a number of issues from managing motivation, coping with stress and/or anxiety, prioritisation and managing perfectionism.

Extensions and special consideration processes

Share this link to let students know how to apply for special consideration that may allow them to obtain an extension, create another assessment, or sit a deferred exam. Monash provides Special Consideration for students who are experiencing exceptional circumstances beyond their control that affect their ability to successfully complete assessment tasks.

Related resources View

This section provides resources that can help you write assessment tasks and outlines some of the technologies that you can use to create questions for assessment tasks, including quizzes, lessons and scheduled timed assessments. Some learning technologies can also efficiently check questions, provide feedback, and give the educator indicators of student understanding to allow adjustments to content delivery.

Designing Assessment regimes
Design effective assessment regimes in line with best-practice principles
eAssessments
Examine students' knowledge, skills and attributes effectively using online assessment activities
Group and Peer Assessment
Use collaborative activities to effectively develop and assess skills, knowledge and attributes
Marking, Grading and Rubrics
Mark consistently through the appropriate application of criteria and moderation practices
Assessment Ideas for Work Integrated Learning Project Units
Work Integrated Learning (WIL) activities are not typical classroom learning experiences for students. The learning and development students undergo in these activities is a combination of discipline-specific content knowledge, technical and generic skills, which provides unique challenges for the comprehensive assessment of WIL. This document provides a list of assessment types that can be used to assess WIL activities which have equivalence to small, medium and large essays and/or reports.
Assessment Types and Methods
This resource is from Charles Sturt University, and discusses a variety of assessment types and methods.
Aligning Assessment to Learning Outcomes
This resource from UNSW shows you how to align your assessment to the learning outcomes of the unit, and has a section outlining a variety of assessment methods that align to generic learning outcomes often used in university assessment.
Reimagining University Assessment in a Digital World
Bearman, M., Dawson, Phillip, Ajjawi, Rola, Tai, Joanna, & Boud, David. (2020). Re-imagining University Assessment in a Digital World (1st ed. 2020.).
Monash has specific policies and procedures related to assessment. Take the time to review these to inform your teaching practice.
Assessment Regime procedure
Explains requirements of developing and implementing an assessment regime for a unit, rules around scheduling, extensions, hurdles, alternative and supplementary assessments, and communicating assessment requirements.
Scheduled Final Assessments procedure
Explains the requirements for timed major assessment tasks that are scheduled after the end of the teaching period including closed-book tasks, open-book tasks, and open-access tasks, as well as eAssessments.
Grading schema procedure
Explains the final grades that are used at Monash in a range of assessment contexts, calculations of WAM, GPA and CGPA, and rules around the use of the withdrawn incomplete (WI) grade.
Marking and feedback procedure
Outlines processes and principles for marking, blind marking, second marking, double marking, provision of feedback, quality assurance, finalising results, responsibilities, and re-marking requests.

Related technologies

The following outlines some of the learning technologies within Moodle that you can use to create questions for assessment tasks, including quizzes, lessons and scheduled timed assessments. Some technologies can also efficiently check questions, provide feedback, and give the educator indicators of student understanding to allow adjustments to content delivery.

Technology	Use	Question formats
Moodle quiz	Formative and summative assessment with quick feedback and marking	Multiple choice, embedded answers (Cloze), numerical, calculated (arithmetic), drag and drop, multiple response, true/false, short answer, essay, matching, select missing words
Moodle Lessons	Adding questions within a stream of content and/or activities	Multiple choice, multiple response, true/false, short answer, essay, matching
H5P activity	Adding questions within a stream of content and/or activities	Multiple choice, multiple response, true/false, short answer, essay, matching, interactive video, arithmetic quiz, drag and drop, drag the words, image hotspots, mark the words, speak the words
Polling tools	Quick gauge of understanding or to frame discussions	Multiple choice, word cloud, up-vote down-vote, rank order, open ended question, clickable image
eAssessment	Online summative exams and assessments	Multiple choice, true/false, matching, embedded (cloze), short answer, essay, composite (case study, multi-part questions), drag and drop, hybrid

The Education Performance Standards identify the expectations of education practice at Monash – See the Education Performance Standards for more details.
Impact on student learning				Impact on educational knowledge		Impact on educational environment
Effective teaching and learning	Responsive program design	Student- centred orientation	Professional learning engagement	Pedagogical content knowledge	Education research performance	Education innovation	Education leadership
✓	✓	✓		✓		✓
You could address these Practice Elements by providing evidence of how you: Write assessment tasks aligned with your unit’s learning outcomes Increase student engagement through authentic assessment tasks Create opportunities for students to engage in diverse and innovative assessment tasks that draw on a range of skills and knowledge.

Learning and Teaching: Teach HQ

Learning and Teaching: Teach HQ

Writing assessment tasks