Research on Assessments

Complete the interactive activities in the Seneca app to work towards your CPD certificate.

Research on Assessment Methods

According to Rob Coe (2017), assessment is a field with lots of very good research. However, some questions are still unanswered, especially related to practical implications.

Cognitive science and testing

Recalling knowledge, also referred to as ‘retrieval’ or ‘retrieval practice’, stimulates the neurological connections involved in storing that knowledge.
Retrieving that knowledge in a variety of contexts creates new mental pathways and supports long-term learning.
Well-made assessments can be a form of retrieval practice and also improve long-term learning.

Examples of assessment

Direct verbal questioning.
Self-questioning.
Writing notes from memory.
Using flashcards.
Writing essays.
Group discussion.

Interleaving and AfL

Interleaving refers to sequencing learning tasks so that similar items are interspersed with different types of items, rather than being consecutive.
- E.g. if the first topic covered (1) were interleaved with the second (2) and third (3) topics, instead of block-assessing students in a sequence of 1, 2, 3 over a period of time, students would be assessed in an interleaved way (123, 123, 123).

Time to forget

In linear teaching, interleaving may involve spaced retrieval practice. This means including time delays between learning and retrieval practice to give students ‘time to forget’.
During and after teaching a topic (3), knowledge from previous topics (1,2) should be assessed, thus requiring students to retrieve previous knowledge. So, interleaved and spaced retrieval would result in a staggered approach to learning and retrieval (1, 12, 123).
Multiple assessment methods should be used.