Assessment in the Work Place

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Need for Assessment
   1. Methods of Assessment
   2. Performance assessment
   3. Portfolio reviews
   4. Learning contracts
3. When to use a Particular Assessment?
4. Giving and Getting Feedback
   1. Useful tips on giving feedback
   2. Positive feedback
   3. Examples of good feedback
5. Skills for Effective Assessment
6. How to avoid failing
7. References

When to use a Particular Assessment?

Allen (1996) believes performance assessment is particularly relevant to work-based learning as it requires students to demonstrate that they have mastered specific skills and competencies by performing or producing something.

The use of a portfolio approach to assessment can assist students to think about their learning whilst on a work-based placement. Furthermore, it can motivate students, provide supervisors with specific examples of a students' learning, help students self assess their progress and also facilitate self-reflection (Allen 1996).

Race (1993) identifies concerns about the assessment process, which can be used to inform decisions about when and how to assess students. These concerns include believing assessment is often done in a rush and may be rarely conducted under the best of conditions. Assessment tends to be governed by 'what is easy to assess' and so may omit to provide detailed insight about students' ability. Students rarely know the intimate details of the assessment criteria, and how they will be interpreted. Another concern is how we assess unassessable qualities? What competences are measured by assessment anyway? Are they ' can do ' competences? Or are they simply 'did do, once' ghosts? What should the assessment be trying to measure?

One way of addressing some of these concerns has been identified by Marsh et al. (2005), who believe that there should be formal staging posts in work-based assessment. A minimum expectation would be that this process involved an initial interview, which includes a student self-assessment, should occur at the start the work-based placement, followed by a mid-placement assessment interview and then a final assessment interview. Lengthy placements of perhaps a year, common in some professions, will obviously require more interim staging posts for assessment.

Many of Race's points need to be considered when undertaking work-based assessment. Another key element of the assessment is the need to tell students how they performed in an assessment. The next part of this unit will explore how this can be done effectively.