L8 1 2

=Students are provided with opportunities to discuss assessment tasks with each other and the teaching staff before attempting marked work.=

Evidence
Laurillard (2002) notes that one of the greatest dissatisfactions with students’ performance is that students did not understand what was required of them (p. 218). This must be explicitly negotiated with students. And it must be done well ahead of their expected performances in assessments.

Assessment practices define both what is and what is not important regarding performance and grading, according to Hannafin et al., (2003). They observe that: ‘While it may not be the teacher’s intent to signal or otherwise limit what a student should learn, some aspects of…work “count”…others do not’ (p. 256). If formal assessment is the only measure of progress in an online environment this can be problematic. Hannafin et al. are concerned that there is a tendency to value quantity over quality of activity by using practices adapted from traditional approaches that may not be suitable or may be of limited effectiveness for the environment. Of other strategies available, they note the advocacy of portfolios, but say that guidance on their use is lacking. Collaboration is ‘valued highly…but we tend to assess the products rather than the collaboration processes per se’ (p. 256). They conclude that although Web-based activities promote problem-solving and critical-thinking, practices for their assessment are unsatisfactorily limited, and, that due to the distance nature of e-learning, it is important to determine ways to implement observational and participatory assessment practices (p. 256). All this can be discussed with students before assessments are actually completed. Students are more likely to take a deep approach to learning if they are intrinsically motivated. To be intrinsically motivated they need to see the relevance and importance of what they are being required to do. (Rust 2002, p. 150).

Resources
Rust (2002) says that assessment systems must be unthreatening, fair and the assessment process and criteria should be explicit and transparent to students (even though research suggests that merely having explicit criteria does not help students to produce better work). What is needed on the other hand is to get students to better engage with the assessment criteria. This could be achieved by discussing the criteria in class, but even better would be to involve the students in a marking exercise. This can improve performance (Rust et al. 2003).