Promoting accessibility of assessment criteria: shifting from a product- to a process- and future-oriented approach

Abstract

Little research has exclusively focused on the accessibility of AC, despite their substantial impacts on students’ and tutors’ engagement with AC and the facilitative role of AC for assessment and learning. Drawing upon sequential online surveys and interviews with undergraduate students from diverse disciplines in a British university, statistical and content analysis revealed the challenges undergraduates faced to comprehend and use AC for their assessment. This study unveiled the entanglement among accessibility, understanding and usefulness of AC for assessment and learning. It uncovered the different effectiveness of varied ways of tutors introducing AC to students and students’ expectations of how tutors could implement AC in assessment and teaching. It highlighted and substantiated the necessity of shifting from the prevailing product to a process- and future-oriented approach to contextualising and aligning AC with assessment tasks, learning outcomes and feedback and thereby harnessing the accessibility of AC for students.