The role assessment has in student learning is widely written in the literature. For example, Brown and Knight (1994) state assessment is at the heart of student experience. Ramsden (1992) explains that from students’ point of view, it is often assessment that defines the curriculum.

The following quotation from Boud (1995) sums up the importance of getting assessment right for our students.

“...students can, with difficulty, escape from the effects of poor teaching, they cannot (by definition, if they want to graduate) escape the effects of poor assessment.” (Boud, 1995, p.35)

Much of the assessment literature argues that assessment has to move from ‘assessment of learning’ to ‘assessment for learning’, where the focus of assessment is to shift from something that is done to our student to something that would become part of students’ learning.  

Assessment for learning is about creating an environment that would foster student development in taking responsibility for evaluating, judging and improving their own performance by actively using a range of feedback. There is a tendency to view assessment for learning as formative assessment. While formative assessment plays an important role in the student learning process, it is vital to have a balance between formative and summative assessment.

The Learning Innovation Expert Panel final report states the importance of innovative and flexible assessment methods to engage our students. Below are some resources looking specifically at the role of assessment in widening access and supporting non-traditional students.

Resources:

• There are four articles in the following document. The one titled "Formative assessment and student success" by Professor Mantz Yorke has a specific focus on the use of formative assessment to support non-traditional students (p.125-131).

• Yorke highlights the importace in provide early study tasks at early stages of a programme to give create constant dialogues between tutors and students. In particular, Yorke suggests the use of "patchwork text" (Winter et al. 2003)^₁, which involves students in completing a series of short assignments that culminate in a reflective commentary on what has been learned, instead of requiring them to complete a single assessment at the end of the module of study.

Improving feedback to students -link between formative and summative.pdf

1. Winter R, Parker J and Ovens P (2003) The patchwork text: a radical re-assessment of coursework assignments, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 40 (2) whole of special issue

• Sambell, K, and Hubbard,A (2004) The Role of Formative ‘Low-stakes’ Assessment in Supporting Non-traditional Students' Retention and Progression in Higher Education: Student Perspectives, Widening Participation and Lifelong Learing Vol 6 (2) available from here

Abstract: 

There is little doubt that strategies to widen participation in UK higher education are having a significant impact on institutions, curricula and staff (Collins & Lim, 2002). Given the current policy emphasis on recruiting students from non-traditional groups, there is an increasing need to find ways of supporting and retaining such students, enabling them to achieve their potential. Whilst formative assessment is often viewed as having an important contribution to make in supporting student progression (Yorke, 2001), it is increasingly under threat of dilution, due to the resource constraints operating in the UK higher education sector.

This article explores the action research project of a UK National Teaching Fellowship award holder, which seeks new ways of redesigning assessment methods to enhance formative assessment opportunities for non-traditional students, especially in the first year of undergraduate study. It particularly highlights research into non-traditional students' perspectives of low-stakes assessment strategies introduced into the early stages of their course, as a means of easing their transition to university study.

• George J.; Cowan J.; Hewitt L.; Cannell P. (2004) 'Failure dances to the tune of insecurity': affective issues in the assessment and evaluation of access learning Journal of Access Policy and Practice, Volume 1(2), available from here

Abstract: 

This paper reports on the curriculum design of an Access programme in Dumfries and Galloway which has taken 23 per cent of its intake of disadvantaged adults successfully into FE and/or HE, and many others into employment. The nature of the assessment, summative and formative, which was incorporated in the integrated curriculum design, was critical to creating confidence, a positive attitude to education, and thence to successful engagement with cognitive demands. Data from the programme demonstrates the importance of addressing such students' affective agendas, and how facilitated self-assessment in particular is a vehicle for 'mainstreaming' students from the isolation of disadvantage into successful educational progress.