Notes:

Before we get to principles of good assessment I would like to discuss ‘why I think it is important to define assessment principles? A key idea for me is that principles help guide and inform practice. Having worked as an educational developer supporting innovative educational practice in HE for many years, I became increasingly aware of the challenge facing busy teachers as they tried to make sense of the vast body of published research on assessment. I believed that if some basic principles could be extracted from the research, these would help teachers think about and identify ways of improving their practices.
 
In my early papers on formative assessment, I not only defined assessment principles but I also provided the research evidence to back each principle, and offered some practical tips and strategies for its implementation. This has been shown to be helpful as indicated by the REAP project. In my own University and in a number of others (eg Melbourne), some managers have felt that defining some assessment principles can help inform institutional assessment strategies. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, I have found that these principles can also help guide the application of technology to support assessment.