Criterion referenced assessment
Definition
Criterion referenced assessment is the assessment of the extent to which a student achieved the goals of a course. This assessment is carried out against previously specified yardsticks ('criteria'). Where a grade is assigned, it is assigned on the basis of the standard the student has achieved on each of the criteria. A diagrammatic 'model' of criterion referenced assessment is shown below.
How to do it
The recommended way to implement criterion referenced assessment in a course involves writing a course profile and putting together an assessment portfolio. An outline of what is needed is given below.
To implement criterion referenced assessment you will need:
- a set of learning goals for the course - what students should be expected to achieve as a result of studying the course
- a way of getting some information about how and how well students have achieved these goals - usually this will come from an assessment program
- a set of criteria for each assessment task. These will tell students along what lines their attempts at the task will be judged. Ideally the criteria will be clearly related to the goals of the course. In many cases one single group of criteria will apply to all assessment tasks
- a set of standards which should be achieved on each criterion. Each standard will describe the performance for which it might be awarded
- a marking scheme for each assessment task which looks at the standards reached by the student on the various task level criteria and includes ways of reporting the outcome to students. Such a report might simply set out the standard achieved by the student on each criterion. Alternatively it might report the student's performance as a single standard or mark. In this case students should be given some idea as to how their performances on the various criteria are combined to yield this single result
- if you are grading, a way of combining each student's performances on the individual assessment tasks into a single grade.
