Moving from high school to university can be an emotionally and academically challenging time for students. It is, therefore, important to develop resources and materials that can support students in becoming increasingly confident about the expectations placed upon them and how they can respond to these. An example of how these resources can be developed was explored by a team at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, UK, who used participatory action research to co-design resources with students studying first-year courses.
Previous research into assessment skill development has often been from the instructor’s perspective, but the Aberdeen team sought to explore assessment resource design with the student at the centre. The Aberdeen team consisted of two members of academic staff and two student interns, who were in their third year of studies. This collaborative endeavour meant that the team was well placed to explore and develop assessment materials to enhance students’assessment literacy in first-year courses.
Focus groups were used to understand how students were making use of the assessment resources already in place. This provided a good opportunity to understand more about how students used existing resources and where they felt there could be more support.
Students and university tutors can work together to co-create assessment resources which support student success. Use of exemplars, rubrics, group work and active learning can all support students’ assessment skills.
Faye Hendry
Students’ views
Students in the focus groups were very positive about the support for building assessment skills already in place and how it made them feel more confident in their work. For example, tutors already spent time in class doing active tasks around referencing, structuring essays, and a range of other aspects of assessment, and students said this built their confidence and helped improve their assignments. This shows a strong link between confidence in understanding the assessment requirements and completing the assessment.
One key finding that emerged through the focus group discussion was the value students placed on exemplification. With the university experience being different from high school, seeing examples of the assessments at different grade levels, albeit on different themes or topics, was incredibly helpful in developing their own work along the right track.
The students suggested that rubrics were useful to support and guide their thinking. These are guides for grading, usually laid out as grids, with descriptions of the expectations for an Excellent grade, a very good grade, a good grade, etc. The students commented that rubrics helped them look at exemplification and increase their understanding of the given assessment criteria. Doing this in a low-stakes environment meant that students could think about how grades might be assigned and how they could then understand the criteria in more detail, which in turn helped them develop their own work.
The focus groups identified that while they could access materials linked to academic writing, assessment resources for oral presentations were less readily available, and they would have appreciated more support in developing their speaking skills to enhance their individual and group presentations.
Developing and evaluating the new materials
The two student interns within the Aberdeen team used the information provided by the focus groups to develop new resources focusing on presentation skills. The student interns filmed themselves presenting on a topic related to education. These films were created at different grade levels – excellent through to satisfactory. These films allowed students to review them collaboratively, use the assessment criteria, and consider how well the presentation would do if assessed. Students then had an opportunity to practice their own presentation skills in a subsequent session. This was designed to develop their skills in speaking, their understanding of the criteria, and their ability to be successful in their later assessed presentations.
Credit. Author
Model for evaluation and co-construction of learning
Through establishing the presentation resources, the Aberdeen Team also created a model for supporting co-construction of assessment materials (Figure 1). This approach enables students to have a higher level of active involvement with the course materials and can lead to the creation and use of new approaches and materials that further support student learning. A scalable and cyclical evaluation process has been developed that can be replicated across other courses and, if desired, scaled up to incorporate more student voices and more course content, as advocated by researchers.
A particular benefit of this approach was the inclusion of student interns who had also engaged with similar assessment processes two years prior. The exemplification they created, in particular, is notably pertinent because, while they are ‘constructed’ exemplars, they have a degree of authenticity as the authors are students themselves.
Implications for initial teacher education
There is a second finding that is particularly useful for teacher educators. Enabling student teachers to be more directly involved in developing and understanding assessment helps them further understand the purposes of assessment and how this will be useful to their own teaching in the future.
3 Steps to support students with their assessments
It is important to ensure that students are supported with their assessment literacy, and there are some key ways in which this can be done:
- Provide a clear range of resources that detail the expectations of a given assessment. This could include a rubric and/or specific assessment criteria.
- Give an exemplification of what the assessment would look like at different grade levels, so that students can collaboratively review these materials and identify the features of the assessment criteria within these examples.
- Follow up with opportunities to practice and review low-stakes versions of the assessment so that students become more confident and able to refine their skills for the summative assessment.
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Journal reference
Hendry, F., Mynott, J. P., Berube, I., & Smith, G. (2025). ‘What the university expects’: evaluating and co-constructing the teaching of assessment skills for first-year undergraduate students of education. Cogent Education, 12(1), 2447557. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2024.2447557
