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Choosing assessment tasks

At the heart of effective assessment is knowing what it is that you want to assess. Once you have decided this, then you need to decide how you will collect that evidence. The validity and reliability of any task depends on its ability to match the intended purpose.

Any assessment is the right assessment if it is measuring what you intended it to measure and if the evidence you collect meets the purpose of the assessment. This guide will take you through the six steps for choosing an assessment task.

When choosing your assessment task you may want to consider how you provide feedback. Visit Feedback to find out more about the key principles of effective feedback, and more.

Consider the different purposes of the assessment:
- Assessment drives learning. From a student's perspective, the assessment always defines the curriculum - ‘what do I need to do to show the learning I have acquired?’ Assessment should be constructed as meaningful tasks that allow a learner to demonstrate their learning.
- Assessment measures learning. Tasks provide valuable information to the student and the educator about where a student is at in their learning at a particular point of time.
- Assessment generates marks/grades for certification and credentialing. To have credibility with students and professional bodies, assessment needs to be meaningful and as valid, reliable and accurate as it can be.
- Assessment prepares students for learning beyond the unit. It helps students to develop and benchmark skills and knowledge for future activities, careers and situations.
- Assessment allows students to develop evaluative judgement. It enables students to understand criteria and standards and evaluate their own skills and knowledge and those of their peers.
Is your assessment going to:
- Gather evidence to inform instruction?
- Gather evidence to inform learning?
- Gather evidence against standards or criteria?
This decision will help to shape the assessment regime and task design.
In order to choose the correct assessment task, you will need to have a clear idea of the specific learning outcome(s) that you are assessing, and ensure your assessments are aligned to these. Consider what you are trying to assess and the evidence of learning that you wish to elicit from students.
If you are struggling to define assessment, ask if the underlying construct of what you are trying to assess has been defined first.
Look at the section on assessment types for further information on the types of tasks (reflective, analytical) that might be used for certain learning outcome statements (analyse, critique).
Knowing what you want to assess will influence the assessment task you choose. It should allow students to show the performance attributes or characteristics that demonstrate evidence of their learning.
Visit assessment activities for descriptions of different tasks.
While it can be tempting to select the task and task design before considering the criteria and expectations for performance in an assessment, the choice of assessment task must support the collection of evidence to demonstrate the desired learning.
Assessment design should therefore consider these elements together, using the criteria to inform the choice of assessment task. Selecting an examination, essay or report without considering the desired standards or criteria may make designing the specific task harder than necessary, and result in challenges with marking.
Visit Marking and grading for more information about criteria for assessment.
A useful way of defining the expectations for assessment can be through the use of a standard rubric. There may be additional information or requirements for assessment that are communicated separately from the rubric (e.g., appropriate conventions for particular writing formats, hurdle requirements etc.).
Assessments may have a number of sub-tasks or pieces of evidence that provide the evidence for evaluation in a variety of formats.
Assessments should have a clear explanation about the mode of assessment as well as any conditions applied to the assessment task. This includes:
- The length, word count, formatting requirements, as well as any specific software that should be used to create the assessment.
- Any specific requirements for where and when the assessment must be undertaken (for example, if it is completed on-site or online, and what day/time this is scheduled)
- Any conditions that apply (for example, scheduled timed assessments may need to be invigilated, so how this happens for any particular assessment task must be explained)
- What a successful assessment looks like (and if possible, whether there are sample assessments available for students to view)
- Any parameters for judging the assessments consistently (marking sheets, rubrics, etc.)
You may want to consider how you will communicate the mode and conditions of the assessment with your students. Will you provide briefing sessions? Or spend time in class going through the assessment criteria?

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Choosing assessment tasks

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