Providing Student Assessment and Feedback

Clear and purposeful assessment design and feedback are powerful tools that offer distinct benefits for both teachers and students.

When designing assessments, it is important to consider the dimensions of performance your students need to demonstrate and align these with the subjects’ learning outcomes. The significance of this is reflected in the University of Melbourne Assessment Policy which states that ‘assessment and grading in subjects must be criterion-referenced and aligned to specific subject learning outcomes', including the graduate attributes and the generic skills they encompass'.

To facilitate deep learning and shift the focus of assessment away from simply testing and ranking students, it is important to design assessments that align with the specific aims and outcomes of the of your subject that enable you to establish specific grading criteria. Grading criteria should assess not only a students’ overall assessment proficiency but their skills in key areas such as analysis, evaluation and critique. Criteria should be explicitly articulated and defined so that students know what is required to achieve certain grades and can endeavour to match their work to the level of quality expected by the assessor.

One powerful way to articulate grading criteria and ensure your assessment aligns with learning outcomes is to use rubrics. Rubrics are a versatile tool and can be helpful for teachers, peers and self-assessment. They not only clearly communicate expectations to students, ensure consistency in marking and facilitate deep learning from assessment feedback but can be used for accreditation purposes such as in Assurance of Learning (AoL).

To help you meet UoM assessment policy standards by adopting rubrics, we have developed a collection of rubric guides and examples across key competencies in FBE programs and subjects. It is hoped that they provide you with examples to help develop your own rubrics.

To make the most of these rubric guides we encourage you to:

Consider your subject learning outcomes and assessment design, i.e. what are you trying to assess?
Match these assessment goals, where possible, with the guides and examples provided above.
Select the rubric criteria in these guides relevant to your assessment and incorporate these into your own rubric.

Remember these guides are a jumping-off point; you should customise and create where relevant to ensure that your rubrics criteria are relevant to your subject and assessment.

In addition to the use of rubrics, it is important that written assessment feedback focus on providing positive commentary to encourage student development. This positive feedback should be accompanied by constructive, measured and candid commentary on how they could improve their grade and skills in the future.

Requirements for assessment expectations and feedback are clearly set out in the University of Melbourne Assessment Policy. This policy upholds that,

Students are entitled to and should always receive feedback, even on end-of-term assessments and,
The feedback provided should be clear, positive and constructive.

To meet these requirements, assessors should provide prompt and detailed feedback that:

Includes comments about the student’s work and provides them with an indication of the relative quality of their work.
Explains what was done well, and/or not well.
Articulates grades with reference to the assessment criteria, rubric and any other articulated expectations.
Is constructive and provides helpful guidelines for better performance next time, ideally indicating what specifically should be done to achieve outstanding and/or improved results.

By adopting these approaches, you will not only work in line with UoM assessment policy and accreditation requirements but also ensure consistency in your marking and help students learn.