The ASKe matrix and notes

The following diagram outlines four approaches to how students develop an understanding of assessment standards.

Quadrant 1 describes the situation where assessment standards are considered to be the province of tutors.  In this traditional approach, few (if any) formal mechanisms provide information on assessment standards; rather, students gradually ‘come to know’ them through informal means such as trial and error and informal discussion.  Such a model may still be relatively effective in stable, homogeneous and close-knit assessment communities, but it is hard to imagine it operating successfully in most contemporary British HEIs where provision is more likely to be fragmented, modularised, and staff are operating with fewer resources per student and diminishing staff/student contact. 

Quadrant 2 involves explicit and formal activities that attempt to articulate assessment standards.  It relies on academics developing, for example, explicit learning outcomes, benchmark statements, and marking criteria which are then given to students and other stakeholders whose role in the process is that of passive recipient.  Currently, this is the dominant logic at Oxford Brookes (and arguably the wider HE community) and the aim of the Centre is to move practice forward from this approach for the benefit of all stakeholders.  

Quadrant 3 is based on the social constructivist model of learning which encourages students to make sense of assessment standards by locating their understanding within their own personal and cognitive constructs and by using active learning techniques (Vygotsky, 1978).  Such active learning techniques facilitate the transfer of tacit knowledge between staff and students on assessment standards.  Much of the School’s recent pedagogic research and innovative practice is located in this quadrant, examples being the ‘pre-assessment intervention’ in which students actively engage with marking criteria and standards where activities are designed to be student-centred and to encourage what Lea and Street (1998) call the ‘academic socialisation approach’ to enhancing student’s understandings of academic skills and requirements.

Quadrant 4 describes understandings absorbed through and created by participation in a community of practice, a term used by Lave and Wenger (1991) to denote a learning environment that includes social relationships and co-participation, two aspects the authors view as necessary for deep learning.  However, Northedge (2003) reminds us that enabling all stakeholders, but particularly students, to become active members of a learning community requires more than the mere delivery of disciplinary knowledge or even a student-centred focus.   It requires students to engage as interactive partners (Gibbs et al, 2004).  In this model of practice, students become more rapidly sensitised to the community’s tacit understandings of assessment standards and academic values.  Activities may happen before or after assessment with the key aspect being students taking an active part.  This could involve student participation in marking workshops, peer review, development projects, social events and community knowledge fairs. (‘Knowledge fairs’ are considered to be a wide range of formal and informal events that are designed to display and transfer knowledge, e.g. conferences, workshops and exhibitions.) 

The four approaches outlined in the diagram are not strictly linear nor mutually exclusive.  Movement around the matrix, as depicted by the curved arrow, does not mean that at each new quadrant the assessment principles and insights of the previous models are superseded or replaced.  Rather, the matrix shows a ‘nested hierarchy’ in that each model encapsulates the understandings of the preceding approach and the transfer of tacit knowledge of assessment standards is facilitated and accelerated at every stage.  For example, the social constructivist approach in Quadrant 3 seeks to engage students actively to communicate tacit knowledge of standards, but to do so, makes use of and builds upon explicit understandings of assessment such as marking criteria described in Quadrant 2.  Accordingly, the community of practice model in Quadrant 4 provides the ultimate means for developing and sharing understandings of assessment and assessment standards, and relies upon and encapsulates the other approaches.