Assessment at a glance

Introduction to assessment

Assessment is, arguably, the most important thing we ‘do’ to our students during their time with us at university. Assessment and assessment-related activities allow our students to demonstrate what they know about what we have taught them and allow us to reward them for that through grades, and ultimately through degree classification.

Key points

  • Assessment is a key driver for learning and our students will often ask how something in class is related to the final exam.
  • At the University of Glasgow, we have designed a set of essential attributes your assessment must have to ensure the quality and fairness of that assessment, and a set of aspirational principles that we hope you will consider when designing or redesigning your assessment practice.

We need to get assessment right and we hope that the following pages will help you to decide if you are getting assessment right for your students, or if there are things you might change to improve your assessment methods.

Relevant Toolkit sections:

► Principles for learning

► Essentials for learning

Students’ expectations of assessment

When thinking about transforming assessment, we also need to think about what our students want from the assessment process.

Answers to this question vary amongst students but they include:

  • wanting to be engaged with the course,
  • wanting to be challenged to demonstrate what they have learned,
  • and asked to engage in meaningful assessment that makes their learning worthwhile.

Of course, responses to this question also include outcomes such as:

  • getting the highest grade possible,
  • being valued for their effort,
  • and for the award to recognise those who achieve the highest standards.

Finally, our students say that

  • they want to be supported to make mistakes and to learn from them,
  • they want to be able to get support when they need to,
  • and that they would like to be involved in the choices and decisions made about assessing their learning.

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