Self Assessment

    Self-assessment is an assessment approach that involves learners in evaluating their own achievement and learning outcomes (Fenwick & Parsons, 2009). Self-assessment promotes life-long learning by encouraging the student to be a more active, responsible and reflective participants in learning process. As an assessment tool, self-assessment has its main strengths in development of evaluative and critical abilities, independent learning, responsibility, proactivity and creativity. However, issues such as time constraints, mismatch between learning and marks should also be addressed before its implementation. (Sluijsmans, Dochy, & Moerkerke, 2014)

While reading through the chapters and journal articles about self-assessment, I reflected upon my previous experience with this approach. Assessment as a tool for learning has a great impact on learner’s development. But it is noticeable from my experience that, once students submit their work, they typically become disengaged with the learning process and “move on” to the next task. Although I had tried to make the rubric explicit and transparent, it seems like many students were still passive recipients of the assessment outcomes rather than taking the ownership of their own learning. One semester, I included the grading table as part of the lab report component, so that, they “had to” assess themselves in the table, and check their own learning before submission. Many improvements were observed in this practice. Almost all the submitted reports shown a significant increase in the score. And some students commented that they felt they had influence and involvement in their learning.

Why is self-assessment effective? I think effective learning is heavily impacted by how much meaningful energy learners put in. Self-assessment fosters students’ feelings of ownership instead of feeling “being judged”. It signals the students that their experience and judgments are valued and respected, so that they are willing to take the responsibility and strive for their own success.  At the same time, their critical thinking skills improve in self-assessment. They identify their strengths and weaknesses, then seek ways to improve.

The second question is, are the learners able to assess themselves? Self-assessment may not be suitable for all levels of learners. (Fenwick & Parsons, 2009) Implementation of innovative approaches also needs careful thinking of the learner group. Besides, for self-assessment, the most difficult part may be to determine the grading criteria. It needs to be informational, open, and explicit with the aims and standards of learning. (Thomas, Martin, & Pleasants, 2011) The overriding authority in the assessment may also be maintained as well.

The concept of self-assessment has given me new insights about assessment strategies. I think it is a very useful tool especially to prepare our learners for future learning. I am also planning to use this approach more often in my practice and there will be a few improvements this time after this week’s reading. First of all, I will spend sufficient time discussing with students of my rationale for doing so. This discussion engages student’s thinking about learning and assessment and also give the student opportunities to seek answers to their own concerns about this approach. Secondly, in order to support the students, I will discuss annotated examples of good, average and poor quality work collaboratively with the students. So that, their judgements are “calibrated” and their understanding of the criteria is enhanced. Lastly, in addition to the self-assessed results, I will also provide descriptive feedbacks to their work. Although self-assessed mark may not be accurate, the goal of assessment is not just providing the accurate mark, but also to promote learning. From this sense, I think it will be meaningful to implement this approach into my future teaching practice.

References

Fenwick, T., & Parsons, J. (2009). Art of Evaluation, 2nd Edition, A Resource for Educators and Trainers. Thompson Educational Publishig.

Sluijsmans, D., Dochy, F., & Moerkerke, G. (2014). The Use of Self-, Peer-, and Co-assesssment in Higher-Education: A Review of Literature. Wageningen, Netherlands: Educational Technology Expertise Centre (OTEC) , Open University of the Netherlands.

Thomas, G., Martin, D., & Pleasants, K. (2011). Using Self- and Peer-Assessment to Enhance Students’ Future-Learning in Higher Education. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 8(1), Article 5.