Self Assessment

Student self-assessment occurs when learners assess their own performance. With practice, they learn to:

• objectively reflect on and critically evaluate their own progress and skill development.
• identify gaps in their understanding and capabilities.
• discern how to improve their performance.
• learn independently and think critically.

Use self-assessment to develop the learning skills students will need for professional competence, and to make them aware of and more responsible for their own learning processes.

Sometimes teachers use self-assessment and peer assessment together. For example, they might require students to use a rubric to critique the work of their peers, and then to apply the same criteria to their own work. students must first learn to peer assess if they are to self-assess effectively.

Skilled self-assessment can be as reliable as other forms of assessment, but teachers must provide students with training and practice if they want results to closely align with other assessors’ results.

The literature suggests that self-assessment may be more useful as a formative learning tool than as a summative assessment.

Benefits

Self-assessment benefits students by:

• helping them develop important meta-cognitive skills that contribute to a range of important graduate capabilities. All professionals must be able to evaluate their own performance; thus, this practice should be embedded in higher-education learning as early as possible.
• increasing their self-awareness through reflective practice, making the criteria for self-evaluation explicit, and making performance-improvement practices intrinsic to ongoing learning.
• contributing to the development of critical reviewing skills, enabling students to more objectively evaluate their own performance and, when used in conjunction with peer assessment, others’ performance as well. With peer assessment, students become more practised in giving constructive feedback and receiving and acting on the feedback they receive.
• helping them take control of their own learning and assessment, and giving them the chance to manage their own learning and development more independently.
• giving them greater agency regarding assessment, thus enriching their learning.
• possibly, in the long run, reducing the teacher’s assessment workload – although this benefit is not sufficient on its own to introduce student self-assessment.

Challenges

Although studies have shown that most students are fairly capable self-assessors, introducing self-assessment can raise dilemmas and challenges. For example:

• Lower-performing and less experienced students tend to overestimate their achievements. As with peer assessment, students’ ability to self-assess accurately must be developed over time, and with substantial guidance. It is definitely not initially a time-saving exercise for the teacher.
• Students may resist self-assessment, perceiving assessment and grading to be the teacher’s job, or having no confidence in their ability to assess themselves.
• Issues can arise if students’ self-assessments are not consistent with peer or staff assessments.