Can asking for students’ perception of assessment improve fairness?

Cast your mind back to the beginning of the academic year. The leaves were swaying in the breeze as freshmen and sophomores passed below them. While you were polishing your syllabus and slides, struggling to cram in everything you wanted to teach, students were focused on the opposite end: how much effort will this course require? There is a good chance they were also wondering whether they would be assessed fairly.

This striking difference in perspective is often forgotten by instructors, leading to hastily drafted assignments, poorly structured exams and unclear exam questions. After all, most of us who opted for a career on campus did so out of a fascination for content and, maybe, teaching it – less for examining others on it.

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How to assess students’ learning gains – and do so in a way that is perceived as fair – is an often-neglected craft; instructors regularly report that it’s their least favourite part of teaching, and their assessment literacy is often poor.

Reasons for this are manifold but two stick out. First, assessment practices are apparently hereditary, and most scholars reproduce (less than optimal) assessment patterns they experienced themselves. Formal training on how to conduct good assessments are rare, and a lack of exchange on this topic among peers does not help, either. Second, scholars are often left alone by their departments, which only offer vague directions and regulations on how student performance should be evaluated.

Of course, no instructor wants to be unfair. Using classroom justice theory as a framework, we can identify three important aspects in which assessment easily can go wrong.

• Informational justice refers to the risk that without explicit consideration, insufficient information may be communicated to the students concerning exactly which assessment and grading criteria are used. Some students might then be better at “reading” their instructors’ preferences for certain keywords, phrases or topics and therefore have a certain advantage.
• Procedural justice addresses the problems that result from applying ill-defined or non-transparent grading procedures. Where instructors’ intuitive judgement is prone to cognitive biases and therefore might be inconsistent among candidates, students will have problems understanding their own grade and start speculating about why they ended up with fewer points compared with their peers.
• Distributional justice tackles the balance between effort invested into a course and resulting grade. If assessment procedures aren’t communicated clearly or aren’t equally applied to every student, this might lead to a serious mismatch and render the invested effort out of proportion.

All three aspects address objectively unfair habits or situations (that is, some students being disadvantaged). Interestingly, though, they implicitly highlight the risk that vaguely defined rules or standards might trigger students to subjectively perceive assessment procedures as unfair.

How assessment affects course perception

The consequences are serious. It has been shown that if students feel unfairly assessed, they report lower interest in the course, a lower motivation to learn, and even elevated levels of aggression and hostility towards the instructor. Low levels of perceived bias, however, correlate with ratings of instructors as being more competent and likeable. Instructors, in turn, are more satisfied with their courses overall.

Crucially, these results are robust even when students obtained better grades then they would have given themselves. They are also only marginally influenced by students’ competencies. This suggests that students’ perceptions are driven by an inherent sense of fairness, or even justice, in relation to assessment. Instructors are well advised to factor this in when designing exams, assignments and grading criteria.

Tips for assessments that are – and students see as – fairer

So, how to make assessments just and at the same time guarantee that students perceive them as fair? Measures should be taken on an individual and institutional level. In addition to widespread guidelines on assessment design and question writing, instructors should consider recommendations logically following from classroom justice theory:

• Allow enough time for finishing assessment task(s) but also for clarifying questions concerning exams or grades.
• Be timely and communicate proactively concerning all assessment-related information.
• Be as explicit and transparent as possible on the criteria used to evaluate assessment task(s).
• Be open and responsive to students’ questions concerning grading criteria and results.
• Use grading criteria that you can apply equally to all student performance.
• Use enough assessment tasks to allow students to show what they know and can do.
• Make sure that assessment task(s) are a balanced reflection of the material that has been taught.

Assessment perception and the whole university 

Given that most exams and gradings happen at the end of a course, most instructors won’t face the consequences of unfairly perceived assessment. It is highly likely, though, that lower interest and motivation to learn will shift to following courses and so compromise the perception of the university as a whole.

Seen this way, it becomes an institutional task of utmost importance to take measures to promote fair assessment procedures and foster a positive outlook on future courses. Being strongly committed to steadily improving teaching quality, the University of Luxembourg is starting to ask its students for their perception of fairness in assessment. Scientifically validated questions rooted in classroom justice theory are incorporated into the regular course feedback and will help to inform a long-overdue dialogue between students and instructors. Results will also establish the base for exchange on best practices in assessment among instructors.

Ideally, asking for students’ perception of assessment will help to improve fairness in assessment.

So maybe in the future, when you look out the window and see the coloured leaves and chatting students, it will be time to consider the students’ perspective on assessment and start a dialogue.

Philipp Sonnleitner is a senior research scientist in the Luxembourg Centre for Educational Testing at the University of Luxembourg.

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