Assessment needs to be viewed as an integral and key element in supporting the development of pedagogy [Assessment can be] the driver of curriculum change (Evans 2017 - also in Evans, Muiks & Tomlinson 2015).
In this section of the Assessment Compendium, the focus is on Creativity in Assessment, aligning assessment practice with the goals of the Education for Social Justice Framework (ESJF), Inclusive Assessment, and Fair Outcomes.
Teaching creatively, learning creatively, and being assessed in creative ways provokes interest and engagement in students, creating space for their cultural wealth and innovation. We offer readers the opportunity to understand how to engage with a creative approach to assessment and why they might wish to incorporate such an approach.
In addition, a programme-level approach to creativity in assessment will encourage integrated development and learning.
Creativity in assessment is not only the use of creative (arts-based) methods in assessment but also of other creative, fresh ways to make assessment inspiring and engaging for students. Creative practice can range from setting more provocative essay questions to asking students to produce revision resources instead of sitting an exam or to make a video diary instead of a reflective essay or report. From this perspective, creativity is part of the process of assessment - rather than something that is itself assessed. This is a key part of assessment being designed as and for learning.
The key underlying premises are that we should employ creative assessment practices because they:
- Motivate by piquing curiosity and offering challenges.
- Provoke active learning and encourage innovation.
- Develop higher order thinking skills.
- Allow for experiential learning and make space for the student and their cultural wealth.
- Contribute to the formation of life-long learners and life-long curiosity.
- Support inclusive curriculum change.
- May be more authentic in terms of developing industry practices and skills.
See also the HEA Marked Improvement document.
When thinking about bringing in greater creativity in assessment, it is important to consider the assessment hours per module in relation to the Assessment equivalencies matrix.
Varying examinations: Word limited rather than time bound; with a group work element that can create active learning in exams; resourced room plus challenge; production of revision materials instead of the exam; production and use of exam ‘passports’; production of teaching materials covering topics students found most difficult.
Varying written assignments: Patchwork text; Recording or curating the learning as a journal or blog or ‘Captain’s Log’; Re-framing or ‘re-genring’ - for example, explanations of key concepts in comic book format or re-producing an assignment as a short story or an episode of The Simpsons (English 2011). Also the setting of creative essay questions.
Visual assignments: Visual/video essay; Website; Visual reflective diary & analysis; Creative patchwork piece; Digital artifact; Multimodal essay; Postcards from the Edge.
Hybrid: Newsletter; Projects (individual or group); Posters; Work-based learning reflection; Any reflection in an alternative format - as annotated art, as poetry, as postcards, in only 10 PPT slides; Portfolios; Self- and peer assessment; Orals; Simulations; Digital storytelling; Delivery of seminars or Workshops; Curate an Exhibition; Devise a Performance; Professional Interview; Practical Demonstration.
Creative approach to LTA & research: Creative teaching, learning, assessment and research practices across the disciplines can be found on this Brighton blog: Visual learning and Visual research methods.
Examples and Case Studies: See Elkington and Evans (2017) Transforming Assessment in Higher Education, Transforming Assessment in Higher Education HEA series. See also: Fung (2017) connected curriculum.
Examples collected from LondonMet staff.
The ways in which learners are assessed and evaluated powerfully affect the ways they study and learn (Angelo 1993).
If we want students to respond creatively, we have to also teach in creative ways.
Creative assessment, as with all praxes that facilitate student learning, should build on teaching practices that are inclusive, that facilitate bonding and belonging (Angelo 1993) and that are active and interactive: co-constructing rather than transmitting knowledge. Students should experience high levels of expectation and challenge; where levels of support subtly change from supporting learning to supporting ‘mastery development’ as the students themselves rise in self-efficacy, self-confidence and ability (Ibid). (See also the Academic Toolkit)
Ecologies and mindsets: A key consideration in the utilisation of creative assessment practice is the development of an ‘ecology’ of creative practice across the University that nurtures creativity and creative mindsets in the teaching/learning environment, in the tutors and in the students. At LondonMet we are part of the #creativeHE project.
Align and Map: It is useful to align and map assessment practice across all modules to create an overarching assessment strategy that challenges and provokes students - that affords agency and choice to students in the meeting of aims and desired outcomes - and that aligns the assessment practices themselves with your creative pedagogic approach. See the guidelines on Programme-Focused Assessment.
Is it harder to mark?
If as a tutor you are more used to marking essays (or reports or exams), you may need to adjust to marking a completely new format or genre of assessment. You can navigate this by developing comprehensive, detailed Assessment Criteria across all grading bands. This may be done in class and with the students for the new assignment; this is good practice for increasing engagement (Evans 2017); it develops pedagogic and assessment literacy; and makes the whole experience more comprehensible and beneficial for tutors and students alike.
Will the students complain?
If students feel a sense of challenge in the new genre being used, they are unlikely to complain for they tend to rise to the challenge of the new assessment format with a different sense of freedom and engagement than they do the (regurgitative) essay. Research indicates that with the typical academic essay, students worry more about ‘getting it right’ than they do about wrestling with the content with which you want them to actively engage. Consider setting a video or photo essay as part of a range of assessment formats, and curriculum innovations, utilised through and across the degree.
Will the students take it seriously?
All the case studies of alternative formats set, suggest that the increased sense of ownership and engagement that the students experience means that they take meaningful alternatives to the essay very seriously and typically perform better than in the more traditional formats. The caveat here is that we must mark to the ‘affordances’ of the new format that we have set. A five minute multimodal artefact plus critical commentary cannot deliver exactly the same content as a 3000 or 5000 word essay, but it can demonstrate very concise thinking and new ways of formulating arguments and using evidence - and in ways that prepare our students for digitally enabled employment.
How can I achieve the learning outcomes?
As with any assessment or assignment that we set, we must devise a challenge that allows the students to meet the required Learning Outcomes. The tip is to help students understand the ‘what/why/how’ of Learning Outcomes themselves. Help students understand how the LOs drive the module - and how meeting them can help the students showcase their learning.
The external won't like it
Typically creative assessment challenges are tougher in practice than the typical essay assignment; the difference is that the students may feel more engaged and challenged by the new task. Moreover, there is no suggestion that we abandon completely the traditional essay or exam; indeed, given that students will have to produce a substantive piece of formal academic writing in their final year in the form of a Dissertation or Project, it is essential that they have the opportunity to develop formal academic writing over the course of their degree. However, it is more equitable to use a blend of different assessment genres or formats to build self-efficacy and that complements and enhances the development of formal academic writing as well.
The assessment is not rigorous enough
Creative assessment challenges are rigorous, it may be that the rigor is expressed differently. Imagine challenging your students to put together a patchwork text wherein they had to demonstrate that they had engaged with the course, reflected on their learning and met all the Learning Outcomes - using short pieces of writing, by producing digital artefacts, and including poetry and other art?
Will it take a long time to develop compared to standard methods like essays?
Remember first that a creative assessment can still be an essay, but perhaps explore again not the purely reflective essay (the, ‘what have you learned on this module?’, type); but set the provocative question:
‘Winnicott (1971) argues that ‘play’ is essential to overcome the fear of transitional spaces - when we are between worlds. To what extent has this module offered the opportunity for students to engage playfully and meaningfully with their learning and thus successfully transition into the second year of the degree programme?’
Secondly, we all had to learn how to set essays; learning to set and mark alternative assessments with compassion can be joyous.
Have I got the skills? Will I need Professional Development?
Typically most tutors were not taught how to set essay or exam questions, nor how to mark; these were skills that it was assumed we just developed. Our PGCert/MALTHE programmes scaffold the devising, development and trialling of creative, liberatory and inclusive practice.
What if it all goes wrong?
This assumes that traditional assessment practices are ‘getting it right’; however, typically staff complain about lack of engagement … Gossferich (2016) demonstrates that if motivation is low student performance will lag behind their potential. Creative assessments help us to help students to engage.
@cogdog (Alan Levine): blogger and creator of the most creative teaching, learning and assessment practices.
Active Learning Network: - See this blog on Active Listening.
Creative Academic: and the #creativeHE community.
Creative Questioning - developing students capacity to ask better questions and transform classrooms.
Connected Learning - ‘let’s be creative together’.
Digital Media + Learning - DML - This collaborative blog and curated collection of free and open resources is produced by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, whose mission is to advance research in the service of a more equitable, participatory, and effective ecosystem of learning keyed to the digital and networked era:
See especially is post on key innovators in this digital age.
Digital Storytelling: What it can do: cached resources on developing an empowering, digitally enabled curriculum/process; #DS106 Assignment Bank; #DS106 Get involved.
Digital Storytelling as an assessment tool slideshare.
DS for Hard to Reach students:
Rubrics for Digital Storytelling: Detailed Example & Website with examples.
Digital tools
Alan Levine’s resource list (which starts with 50 ways to tell a story):
Creative ways to ‘present ’: Storytelling digitally.
Short videos on using tech for LTA - can also be used as examples of DS.
Video tutorials and documents that may be useful for both staff and students.
Creating resources: visual digital presentation [ELDT Blog].
Videos: Visual digital presentation.
ImaginEd - creative pedagogy blog - see creativity in assessment and education for what inspires.
Tactile Academia - blog that explores regenring and creative academic practice.
The Art and Science Project - designed to provide innovative instructional strategies and assessments to foment creativity in the teaching of Science.
Visual Learning - Visual ways to teach, learn - and research.
Rationale and relevance
Arguably given the constant measurement, the high stakes assessment, and the League Tables, that students will have experienced prior to attending university; we argue that it is necessary to invigorate teaching and learning practices with the driver of creative assessment in order to destabilize transactional notions of education itself. That is, to provoke curiosity (Schmitt & Lahroodi 2008) and facilitate active, creative and ‘owned’ learning, we need to disrupt the ‘taken for granted’ perception that education is training, that knowledge is memorisation, and that ‘study’ involves the rote learning of fixed forms of knowledge (Burns, Sinfield and Holley, 2009). A creative approach to academic practice promotes the freedom to experiment and question (Huizenga 1949) which helps students to navigate uncertainty, explore contradictory knowledge claims and cross the academic threshold of ‘phronesis’: deliberation with no predetermined outcome (Abegglen, Burns & Sinfield 2018, Meyer & Land 2006, Molinari 2017). If we dare to be creative (Creme 2003), we will find that creative assessment practices can give students access to and agency in and through the curriculum (Elkington and Evans 2017).
Assessment is a dominant force determining student focus (Boud and Falchikov 2007). With constructive alignment (Biggs 2003), we can harness creative assessment practices to drive creative pedagogy and creative curriculum development; or conversely, to bring the assessment practices more in line with already revitalised or innovative pedagogies. Creative or playful practices do not constitute a ‘dumbing down’ of the high standards of Higher Education (HE), neither are they a passing fad; but are designed to ‘light a fire’ in the minds of our students (see also Creative Academic), focus on assessment processes and promote academic success. Creativity is ‘serious business’ (Parr 2014), a ‘necessary freedom’ (Huizinga 1949) for students engaged in managing and succeeding in their own learning (Abegglen, Burns & Sinfield 2016).
Creative approaches to teaching, learning and assessment confer the challenge to experiment, to question, to wrestle with emergent knowledge and as yet unknown answers. They invite students to be generative and iterative rather than transactional and reiterative; they invite staff to move from traditional approaches to more progressive ones (Trowler 2010; 41) which then allows students to construct knowledge for themselves within and across their epistemic communities. Creative practice allows us to use ‘language’, mark- and meaning-making in all their diversity to enable and provoke active learning: from the setting of provocative essay questions to utilising poetry to promote engagement and belonging. If education does involve transformation of the self, we need more creative and ludic practices in assessment for
‘It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self (Winnicott 1971, p.54)’.
Creative assessment practices can develop a wide range of skills and competencies in our students; we have seen them also unleash the academic potential in our students (Abegglen, Burns & Sinfield 2016, Burns, Sinfield & Abegglen 2015, Sinfield, Burns & Abegglen, forthcoming). Whilst traditional assessment practices tend to privilege those with already existent cultural capital, creative assessments can offer challenges to all our students and build a creative capacity that once harnessed develops self-efficacy and self-belief, and develops our students’ abilities and success as emergent academics.
The research evidence to support the concept/approach
Assessment can be viewed as being for, as and of learning (Boud and Falchikov 2007)
Assessment for learning helps students to realise that they must take action to learn, that they must engage and focus to consciously and wittingly initiate the processes of their own learning. Creative challenges have the potential to pique curiosity and motivate the student to engage and actively learn.
Assessment as learning reveals that assessment is a process rather than a product; it is heuristic, that is, the act of engaging in the assessment process brings about active learning (Elkington and Evans 2017). A creative challenge - the production of a 3D object or video essay, the putting on of an Exhibition or the running of an interactive workshop for other students - engages the student in the process in powerful ways that build self-efficacy and that in turn create the conditions for academic success (viz. Abegglen, Burns & Sinfield 2016).
Whilst creative assessment practices can pique curiosity and provoke engagement, assessment without challenge does not motivate the student and thus fails as an assessment of learning (Gossferich 2016). Creative assignment challenges can be those that involve or develop the student voice and/or that invite students to join their epistemic communities (Ibid). The caveat is the unchallenging assignment that fails to stimulate student motivation, for here, the student’s performance will lag behind their competence, especially in writing tasks (Ibid). Indeed, in her international review of research into student engagement, Trowler (2010) found that engagement with learning is enhanced by active participation in learning (in and out of class); collaborative activity; and student involvement in the design, delivery and assessment of their learning.
There is increasing evidence of the benefits of consciously harnessing the emotional and embodied dimensions of learning that neuroscience is producing. Creative, playful and visual assessment practices (Ridley & Rogers 2010) can offer alternative ways of processing information, curating (Mihailidis & Cohen 2013) and communicating ideas, developing understanding and, most importantly, they facilitate the research and exploration of new topics (McIntosh 2010) and fields of study – in writing, yes, but also in a variety of other communicative, multimodal genres and alternative practices (McIntosh and Warren 2013). Creative assessments foreground process - with ‘language as meaning making, as knowledge, as a system; literacies as practices (Street 1984); and communication as multimodal (Kress 2010)’ (English 2011).
Moreover, Thomas (2002) in her research into ‘Student Retention in Higher Education: the role of institutional habitus’, argues that the typical university habitus assumes and privileges the success of a white, middle class and able bodied student; de facto discriminating against all forms of ‘difference’ and diversity. Creative assessment practices afford more opportunity to shape a welcoming, holistic and creative curriculum and pedagogy, need not privilege one form of cultural capital over another: to ‘Develop a Digital Me’ rather than engage in a digital literacy checklist task; to collaborate to produce a video diary or digital teaching and learning resource rather than answer another MCQ. Creative assessments can be harnessed to promote an environment and praxes designed to enable all students to flourish academically whilst demonstrating their learning more on their own terms.
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