Assessment-as-Learning: Why a lot of assessments lead to low performance on the long run.
Ever had the experience that learners forget most of what has been learned within days or within weeks? Of course, we all have. Why is this? And is there any good alternative ? This is what "Assessment-as-Learning" is about.
Some background first:
‘Assessment of learning’ assists teachers in using evidence of learning to assess achievement against outcomes and standards. This is referred to as ‘summative assessment'.
‘Assessment for learning’ involves teachers using evidence about students' knowledge, understanding and skills to inform their teaching or to provide better guidance to learners. This is also referred to as ‘formative assessment'.
Recent research has shown that summative assessments lead to a rather low impact in the long run, since learners tend to forget the majority of what has been learned if they do learn it in a ‘test-driven’ situation (Deslauriers et al.,2011; Dochy et al., 2018; Freeman et al., 2014; Schneider & Preckel, 2014. The same accounts for formative assessment since formative assessments are either often used summatively by teachers (e.g. by adding up scores of formative assessments to a summative score) and/or are perceived by learners as being summative in nature (and thus leading also to a rather low impact).
Assessment as Learning provides a good alternative in which we integrate learning and assessment.
Assessment as Learning’ is a way of assessing learners that is different from traditional assessment and replaces both assessment of learning and assessment for learning. In other words, it has both a summative and a formative function without the above stated disadvantages. It is used in order to prevent learners from having fear, from losing their intrinsic motivation and their interest. Assessment as Learning is aiming at being more suited to the modern times of IT and internet, at being more in line with current ways of learning, at being more reliable and providing retention of knowledge and skills on the long term and not just solely at a single testing moment.
How do you assess your learners? Do they show impact in the long run of what they learned?
Read in our next blog how to do this in practice.
Assessment for learning has painfully missed the goal the it wanted to reach. Basically because AfL was implemented by adding more tests to the range of summative tests already used, and thus sees by learners as another type of summative tests. Therefore, since some years, we are focusing now on Assessment-as-Learning: Integrating assessment into the learning process.