Designing transparent assessment strategies for online learning in HE (English language)

The assessment of skills assessment allows for determining an individual’s strengths and weaknesses. Its main purpose is to identify the students’ gaps and adjust learning activities accordingly, but also to highlight the students’ strong points and capitalise them for the development of other learners.

Within the scope of digital assessment, student agency refers to students’ active and responsive involvement in both learning and assessment practices. As opposed to “lecturer driven, one-way transmission of feedback” (Pitt, Bearman, and Esterhazy, 2020), student agency implies that students are engaged in a dialogic process of looking for (rather than just receiving) feedback from different sources and at different times, crosscutting it with their own experience and context, and using it to make informed and independent choices regarding their learning. Described as reflective and action-oriented, it relies on formative and constructive feedback (upon which students can act on), moving beyond specific tasks.

The term reflection is used to refer to a process of evaluating a lived event to investigate, appraise, and explain and, by doing so, cast light on the education concerning repetition and exercise (Reid, 1993). One of the key goals of teachers is to encourage students to engage in reflection procedures as this may significantly contribute to facilitating learning and providing deep learning experience by allowing learners to become more independent and taking responsibility for their own learning (Sharma, 2010).

Summative assessment is “any assessment activity which results in a mark or grade which is subsequently used as judgement on a student performance. Ultimately judgements’ using summative assessment marks will be used to determine the classification of awards at the end of a course or programme” (Iron, 2008, p. 7).