The document discusses assessment task design through a case study of a history course. It describes the course's three assessment tasks: a fieldwork report, participation grade, and individual project. For participation, students complete one-sentence responses (OSRs) in lectures to incentivize attendance and develop communication skills. Both students and the teacher saw benefits to OSRs, such as preparing for lectures and understanding different perspectives. While offering flexibility, assessing participation requires balancing reliability with productive learning. Overall, good task design focuses on promoting learning, engaging students, mirroring real-world applications, offering some choice, and providing feedback.

1. Exploring assessment task
design and implementation
David Carless
IAEA, Singapore, May 2014
The University of Hong Kong

2. Overview
 The nature of ‘good’ assessment tasks
 Examples from five award-winning
teachers in different disciplines
 Exploring the ‘History’ case
 Implications for assessment task design
The University of Hong Kong

3. Aims of paper
• To explore the nature of good assessment
tasks in undergraduate education;
• Through critically analyzing the practices
of award-winning teachers
The University of Hong Kong

4. Task design principles
• Valid and reliableValid and reliable
• Fair and transparentFair and transparent
• Encourage deep approaches to learningEncourage deep approaches to learning
• Distribute student effort evenly acrossDistribute student effort evenly across
topics and weeks (Gibbs, 2006)topics and weeks (Gibbs, 2006)
• Permit choicePermit choice
• Be contextualised, authenticBe contextualised, authentic
The University of Hong Kong

5. Task design issues
• How many tasks for a module?
• What mode of task(s)?
• How much variety?
• What kind of sequence, linkages and
coherence? (cf. Boud et al, 2010)
The University of Hong Kong

6. TASK DESIGN IN FIVE CASES
BUSINESS: Promote dialogue
GEOLOGY: Three tasks, including Group
project and exam
LAW: ‘Struggle’ against primacy of exams
ARCHITECTURE: Portfolio of designs
HISTORY: Three tasks, including a
participation grade
The University of Hong Kong

7. Context of History case
• Making History: a first year foundation
course taught with a diverse cohort of 110
students.
• Aim for students to engage critically with
representations of the past and interpret
connections between the past and the
present.
The University of Hong Kong

8. History case
Fieldwork report 30%
Participation 30%
- tutorial participation 15%
- ‘one sentence response’ 15%
Individual Project 40% (draft 10%; final
30%)
The University of Hong Kong

9. Teacher rationale
I want to get away from the orthodoxy of
the essay and provide other ways of
communicating, so students can
showcase their ability to master
discourses of history. … I provide choice
because I want students to explore
something that energizes them and they
have a stake in it.
The University of Hong Kong

10. Assessing participation
I’ve moved towards the position that
students would mainly see the relevance
of what goes on in the class if it is
assessed. I want classroom participation
to be assessed and for students to feel
they have a got a stake in what goes on.
The University of Hong Kong

11. ‘One sentence response’ (OSR)
In each lecture of the course, students
complete a short handwritten response to
an issue. Examples:
- Describe your fondest memory. Explain
your choice.
- Is history a science or an art? Explain your
answer.
The University of Hong Kong

12. Teacher rationale for OSR
I want to assess their learning experience
during classroom time and keep ‘bums on
seats’: provide an incentive for
attendance. I am a firm believer in the
value of short written exercises. I think it is
a great way of honing their communication
skills; after all we live in an age of Twitter
and students rarely have call to write long
research pieces.
The University of Hong Kong

13. Students’ views on OSR
• The OSR question is always related to the
topic of the next lecture. By doing the
OSR, I can predict what the next class will
be about so it acts as a kind of
preparation.
• I like it because we get to look at others’
responses, so we know how others think.
It broadens the way I think and helps to
develop critical thinking. It is quite fun too.
The University of Hong Kong

14. Learning orientation of OSR
• Encourages sustained engagement
• Promotes student thinking/involvement
• Anticipates the next class
• and stimulates dialogue “puts students’
voices into the class”
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15. Features of History task design
• Variety of tasks
• Fieldwork e.g. Museum visit
Participation in the discipline
• Student choice
• Assessing participation
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16. Students’ views
• … flexibility … initiative … autonomous
learning
• “if you want a high grade, you really need
to learn things”
• Some possible lack of congruence
between lecture content and project
content (dependent on student choice)
The University of Hong Kong

17. Issues in History task design
• Personal student investment
• Heavy teacher (and student) workload
• Assessing participation (reliability vs
productive learning)
• Coherence and linkages?
The University of Hong Kong

18. Implications
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19. Competing priorities
• Fairness/reliability <-> promoting learning
• Variety <-> familiarity
• Innovation <-> conservatism
• Confidence <-> defensiveness
• Trust <-> accountability
The University of Hong Kong

20. Good Assessment task design
• Resolves competing contingencies by
focusing on promoting student learning;
• Facilitates persistent intellectual
engagement;
• Mirrors real-life uses of the discipline;
• Permits some degree of student choice;
• Engineers in-class feedback dialogues in
relation to tasks and work in progress.
The University of Hong Kong

21. THANK YOU
The University of Hong Kong

22. Criteria for excellent OSR
• “shows clear evidence of independent
thinking, a critical approach to the
question posed, and perceptive reflection
upon the issues it raises. It leaves the
reader no doubt as to the position of the
author and why she or he has adopted it.
It presents a clear, well-developed and
effective justification for the author’s
position”.
The University of Hong Kong

23. The University of Hong Kong