Engaging students through assessment

There is little doubt that student engagement is receiving a considerable amount of attention in research, policy and educational development. A wide array of engagement initiatives have recently flourished in the UK and elsewhere, often with a view to helping students adjust and adapt to university culture, so that they are enabled and encouraged to engage in university life on a number of levels. This chapter focuses on the ways in which assessment can play an important part in helping or hindering students’ levels of engagement with academic study. First, drawing on recent scholarship in the field of assessment, which asserts the need for widespread shifts in the ways in which assessment is conceptualised, it highlights the ways in which assessment offers a fruitful and potent arena in which faculty can make concerted efforts to engage students with their studies and the experience of being and belonging at university. It goes on to warn, however, about some of the problems that emerge if the underpinning principles of the new paradigm are poorly understood or applied in restrictive ways, because these act as barriers to engagement. Next, it focuses down on the links between assessment and engagement, which are then related to holistic models of assessment for learning (AfL). Finally, the chapter offers some concrete examples of the ways in which assessment can be designed to promote engagement and improve the student experience of learning. Illustrations of students’ views of the benefits are offered, drawn from empirical studies conducted as part of a large-scale initiative to implement AfL in a UK university (Sambell et al, 2012). Broadly speaking, these link strongly to themes of engagement.