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Assessment
Assessment is a key part of the learning cycle. It is the moment at which a judgement takes place, and the outcome of assessment is feedback. Because of its importance, this page can do no more than scratch the surface of a huge topic. It is useful to separate carefully the type of assessment from its purpose. Types of assessment include exercises, coursework, examinations or project work. The three purposes of assessment are as follows.

Formative assessment.
The purpose of formative assessment is to support and inform students' learning. This feedback could be qualitative, eg written or oral comments. Such comments could be detailed and tailored to what the student has written, or brief indications of where students' written work departs from model solutions.

Summative assessment.
The purpose of summative assessment is to establish the achievement of the student. In mathematics, summative feedback is most often quantitative, either a mark or a percentage. An examination provides the majority of the summative assessment in undergraduate mathematics.

Evaluative assessment.
The purpose of evaluative assessment is to measure the effectiveness of the teaching or the assessment of students. Such assessments could have quality enhancement or quality audit functions. For example, student feedback questionnaires. Examination statistics sometimes have a minor evaluative function.

For pragmatic reasons, an individual item of assessment could be used for a number of different purposes. For example, an "exercise sheet" may have a primarily formative function and students' work could be marked against model solutions with comments provided drawing students' attention to correct and incorrect working. The student's achievement is then reduced to a single numerical mark which is a crude formative measure. This mark could also be used for summative purposes as a contribution to the overall module mark. Qualitative comments could be aggregated as an evaluative assessment to inform subsequent teaching (quality enhancement). Marks for a particular piece of work could be an evaluative assessment to ensure a team of Postgraduate Teaching Assistants (PGTAs) are marking in a consistent and fair manner: quality audit. It is the use to which the outcomes of an assessment are put which has a greater bearing on the purpose of the assessment than the form of these outcomes.

Strong messages are communicated to students by the choices made for assessment: staff should consider carefully the purpose of assessment, particularly when this is both formative and summative. A "reward for sustained achievement" needs to be balanced against an "opportunity to learn from mistakes".

For specific work on computer aided assessment, click here.

More in-depth information can be found in our project Good Practice in Assessment of Mathematics, Statistics and OR

Other more specific assessment focused projects include Plagiarism in Statistics Assessment, Variety in Statistics Assessment,Computer-aided learning and assessment of critical pathanalysis, Diagnostic Tests with Support.

We also run workshops, many of which address assessment, either directly (eg Assessment and Plagiarism in Undergraduate Mathematics) or more indirectly. Forthcoming events can be found here.