Developing evaluative judgement: enabling students to make decisions about the quality of work

Abstract

Evaluative judgement is the capability to make decisions about the quality of work of oneself and others. In this paper, we propose that developing students' evaluative judgement should be a goal of higher education, to enable students to improve their work and to meet their future learning needs: a necessary capability of graduates. We explore evaluative judgement within a discourse of pedagogy rather than primarily within an assessment discourse, as a way of encompassing and integrating a range of pedagogical practices. We trace the origins and development of the term 'evaluative judgement' to form a concise definition then recommend refinements to existing higher education practices of self-assessment, peer assessment, feedback, rubrics, and use of exemplars to contribute to the development of evaluative judgement. Considering pedagogical practices in light of evaluative judgement

Can a rubric do more than be transparent? Invitation as a new metaphor for assessment criteria

“…Assessment criteria have a key role to play in making assessment sustainable through building a students' capacity to make evaluative judgements about their own work, after formal education has finished (Boud 2000, Tai et al 2018). A singular assessment task, however well designed and appropriately supported, may not be sufficient.…”

“…This is not ideal. From a learning perspective, assessment criteria should promote sophisticated ways of knowing, including coming to understand what constitutes quality of work (Tai et al 2018). This paper seeks to present a different way of thinking and talking about assessment criteria in order to meet these aspirations.…”

RiPPLE: A Crowdsourced Adaptive Platform for Recommendation of Learning Activities

“…For example, RiPPLE enables students to author learning activities that help them think carefully about the concepts and learning outcomes of the course, formulate distractors for multiple-choice questions (MCQs) (which requires them to analyze misconceptions their peers might have), and explain their understanding of a concept to other students who chose the wrong answer. More recent models of learning also provide evidence that engaging students in elaborating on the learning content (Pressley et al, 1992;King, 1992), such as developing evaluative judgment (Tai, Ajjawi, Boud, Dawson, & Panadero, 2018), can increase learning. In RiPPLE, these elaborations can take many forms, including clarifying an idea, constructing an original explanation of a concept, judging the quality of an activity, or comparing and contrasting an activity with other activities.…”

Surfacing tensions through making explicit our evaluative judgements of research

“…It encapsulates the ongoing interactions between the individual and his or her peers and others, and the standards of performance required for effective and reflexive practice within a discipline. 6 Developing evaluative judgement is precisely about learning what 'good' looks like However, rather than a discipline, I am using van Enk and Regehr's 7 conception of health professions education as a knowledge-producing field, defined as (p. 337):…”

“…Developing evaluative judgement is precisely about learning what ‘good’ looks like and making appraisals about when a paper, for example, or our understanding of a concept is good enough. It encapsulates the ongoing interactions between the individual and his or her peers and others, and the standards of performance required for effective and reflexive practice within a discipline …”