On 25 September, the 'FAIR Assessment & Grading Practices' workshop took place at the Erasmus Education Lab. Facilitated by Aki Negate and Fanny Passeport from ErasmusX, and Marijn van den Doel from RSM, and organised by the Community for Learning & Innovation (CLI). During the workshop, the facilitators provided valuable insights that can be applied for a more equitable assessment and grading process.
The need for improving equity and inclusivity in the assessment and grading process
In the beginning of the workshop, a common thread was found among everyone: grading and assessment are an important part of education, and everyone can do better and improve their approaches in making it more equitable. A diverse group of participants from different faculties and disciplines joined the facilitators. Aki Negate, a student assistant at ErasmusX and Psychology student, brought a valuable student perspective to the table. He was also joined by his colleague at ErasmusX, Fanny Passeport, who is an education developer (and also a doctoral candidate in the field of feedback). They were joined by Marijn van den Doel, a learning innovation consultant at RSM, who initially joined the workshop as a participant before becoming a facilitator himself. “I was really interested in the insights that the workshop provided me with,” mentioned Marijn. “With the help of the workshop, I became more aware of my implicit biases, and wanted to take part in facilitating this workshop as I see it being very valuable”.
Different personal circumstances
One of the main objectives of the session was to become aware of one’s own personal biases, power, and privileges. From this, the facilitators emphasized how more empathy and understanding can be fostered between teaching staff and students. The first exercise asked the participants to step forward if they agree with statements about their own achievement in school, their support at home from their family, and feeling represented. At the end of this exercise, it became clear that not everyone has the same levels of power and privilege, and that these differences can have major influences on experience and for instance on academic success. This shows explicitly that equity is an important part of the assessment system- every student comes with a different background, support system, and set of personal circumstances, so we must take that into consideration when designing assessments and grading tools.
Diverse perspectives on educational assessment
The second activity provided the participants with four statements, and they had to stand in one of four corners of the room labeled with four different positions (strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or strongly agree). These statements concerned the topics of blind-scoring, equal conditions during assessments, and equal opportunity to succeed. Most participants were in the same corner of the room for each of the prompts, but each of their professional and sometimes personal backgrounds made their approach to the prompts differ. This made for an interesting conversation for each prompt, as they reached similar conclusions from different viewpoints and experiences, broadening their perspective towards equity (rather than equality). As always, there were also points of disagreement – for example, around the fairness of individual grades versus group grades, but valuable insights and follow-up questions emerged from engaging in divergent thinking.
Implications for assessments and grading
As a takeaway from the session, the facilitators shared some key points to keep in mind when approaching equity and inclusivity in assessment and grading. A good place to start is acknowledging our positionality (in terms of power and privilege). They introduced and explained the concept of intersectionality, and how it is key to recognizing where we stand and how the intersecting identities influence our experiences and interactions with ourselves and others, allowing us to recognize our own biases. Furthermore, they gave some gains that can come from having inclusion be our “North star”, guiding us in developing trust, celebrating variability and flexibility, and encouraging collaboration between teachers and students.
Want to know more? The three facilitators have developed a guide called “FAIR Assessment & Grading”, which follows from this workshop and can be downloaded here.
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