Aligning teaching and assessment to curriculum objectives John Biggs

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As there is no intrinsic connectionbetween the curriculum andassessment, just focus on what will getyou through the assessment.For a further treatment of this controversialtopic see Biggs (2003, Chapters 8, 9).So what’s the alternative?The alternative is an assessment system thattells you how well each individual student’sassessed performances match what is required.Surely this is the aim of all teaching. Itrequires teachers to state desired outcomes inthe form of standards or criteria thatstudents are to attain. How well they attainthem, minimally or beyond reasonableexpectations, is reflected in the gradingsystem. Most students should be able to reachthem at an ‘acceptable’ level.Matching individual performances against thecriteria is not a matter of counting marks butof making holistic judgments. And this is whereteachers start to worry. Judgment is‘subjective’, isn’t it?, while quantitative markingis precise and objective. In case of dispute youcan point to a number, a score: You didn’t getenough marks, sorry. Isn’t that much easierthan justifying a holistic judgment?No. Those ‘marks’ are themselves anaccumulation of mini-subjective judgments. Theresidual error is probably greater than that inan holistic judgment that can be justified byargument and reference to the criteria.Rather, I would ask you to justify why 75 andover should be an A. Why not 70? Or 90? It isalmost universally accepted that getting halfright, 50 per cent, should be a pass. Why?Numbers, and arbitrary cutting points, onlyappear to make the process objective andprecise. It is not at all.So we come back to holistic judgment.Teachers should be able to justify theirjudgments. And this is so much easier if thecriteria to be met are spelled out in the initialobjectives. Dealing with student disputes thenbecomes a seminar on the nature of goodlearning, not a demeaning quibble over a markhere, a mark there.An example: Arriving at a final gradeLet us look at an example of qualitative grading.The following were the grading criteria I usedin a unit in a Master’s programme foreducational psychologists.CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTIONCourse Objectives and Grade CriteriaGrading will be based on your attaining the followingobjectives:1. demonstrate that you correctly understand andcan apply the principles of good teaching andassessment to chosen contexts.2. demonstrate a knowledge of selected aspects ofcurriculum design and management and how theyrelate to the educational system in Hong Kong.3. show how the content and experiences in thiscourse may enhance your effectiveness as an EP.4. show evidence of reflective decision-makingFinal grades will depend on how well you candemonstrate that you have met all objectives:A: awarded if you have clearly met all theobjectives, displaying deep knowledge of thebase content, original and creative thinking,perhaps going beyond established practice.B: awarded when all objectives have been met verywell and effectively.C: awarded when the objectives have beenaddressed satisfactorily, or where the evidenceis strong for some objectives, weaker butacceptable in others.F: less than C, work plagiarised or not submitted.
The students were given the above, and thefinal assessment was based on a portfolio theysubmitted comprising: a paper, a report, arationale of a group presentation, and a selfevaluationin which they made their case as tohow they thought they had addressed each ofthe objectives. On an assessment sheet handedback to the students, each item was discussedin terms of what objectives it met and how well.The grade was immediately apparent. Nocounting, no arbitrary, unsustainable decisions.It took a little longer than marking a finalexam, but not much longer.There’s a postscript. The university requiredreporting in percentages, otherwise thecomputer system could not calculate finalgrades. So I simply used the existing arbitrarypercentage cut-offs, but after the event. Thatis, my qualitatively allocated grades determinedthe percentage reported, not vice versa: apercentage did not determine the grade. Thebackwash to students was thereforequalitative, not quantitative; they knew whatthey had to do to get an A,. On the other hand,knowing that they had to accrue 70 marks toget an A is not very helpful, except they had toscrabble for marks wherever they could. So, inmy case, if 70+ was an A, and I had judged theportfolio to meet the requirements for A, thenif it was a bare A, I awarded 72 of these markthings; if it was a good A, I gave 78, and so on.The final irony was that final grades werereported in? Yes, A, B, C, and F categories! So Igraded in categories, converted into marks, onlyto be converted back into categories again.Just why teachers were not required to reportin categories in the first place is one of thoseeternal mysteries of university administration.The effect on most staff was, unfortunately,to mark in percentages from the start, with allthe attendant problems mentioned above.So we can get around many bureaucraticobstacles to aligned teaching and assessment.The important thing in an aligned qualitativeapproach is that the criteria for differentiallyacceptable levels of performance are there forall to see, and the determination of a student’sperformance is completely transparent, ascriterion-referenced assessments are, orshould be. Norm-referenced assessmentscannot be transparent in the nature of thecase, because it depends on how clever theother students are as much as on how cleveryou the student are.Some might perceive a difficulty at this point.What if most of my students, say eighteen outof a class of twenty, met the criteria for A?Wouldn’t I be seen as a soft touch? Wouldn’tothers look at the results and say: Thestandard is obviously too low? Well, yes, I’msure many would say that. The important thingis how I derived those criteria for an A. If Iderived them by judging, perhaps inconsultation with the profession, that agraduating psychologist needed to meet certaincriteria, and they were those I’d adopted for agrade of A, then it’s party time, surely.Congratulations all round.What is more likely is that the Board ofExaminers would throw up their arms anddemand a regrade: No more than fifteenpercent should be A’s, twenty at absolute most!Otherwise, whatever will they think of us!This is measurement model thinking. Becauseability is distributed along the normal curve,the majority of the class must, by a law ofnature, be awarded middle grades, a few topgrades, a few low passes or fail. That argumentassumes that ability determines learningoutcomes, not that good learning is facilitatedby good teaching. My definition of goodteaching, on the other hand, is where westarted. If we can provide an environment inwhich unpromising students display the qualityof work that only good students had displayedhitherto, that’s good teaching. Good teachingbeats the distribution of ability, it does notfollow it.
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Aligning teaching and assessment to curriculum objectives John Biggs

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