1. Home
  2. Explore
  3. About the University
  4. Academic Affairs
  5. Teaching and Learning
  6. Guidance
  7. Assessment & Feedback
  8. What is Assessment?

Teaching & Learning

What is Assessment?

Assessment is more than simply giving students a grade or checking whether they have achieved the intended learning outcomes. It is about gathering and interpreting evidence of learning to understand what students know, what they can do, and how they are progressing. It involves making informed judgments about achievement, but it also shapes learning itself: the tasks students complete, the feedback they receive, and opportunities for reflection influence how they learn and develop over time.

So, assessment serves different purposes. It provides evidence that students have achieved the required standards, giving confidence that a qualification represents meaningful and credible achievement. At the same time, it supports learning by helping students recognise strengths, identify areas for improvement, and develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence needed for future study, work, and lifelong learning.

A major challenge for assessment practice is that assessment always does double duty:  it needs to fulfil multiple functions (...) assessment needs to provide a fair appraisal of current achievement whilst at the same time contributing to ongoing development of the individual being assessed (Carless, 2020).

We think that this quote, from David Carless, highlights a useful way of answering the question 'What is Assessment?'. Rather than seeing assessment simply as a mechanism for measuring achievement, it positions assessment as a practice with multiple, interconnected purposes. Good assessment needs to do more than measure achievement. It should provide trustworthy evidence of learning while also helping students grow, reflect, and become more independent learners. These different purposes are often described through three complementary perspectives: 'assessment of learning', 'assessment for learning', and 'assessment as learning'.

The triad of assessment OF, FOR, and AS learning provides a useful framework for understanding the different purposes assessment can serve.  It helps us to recognise that assessment is not only about measuring what students have learned, but also about supporting learning as it happens and developing students’ ability to take ownership of their own learning. Taken together, these approaches are based on the understanding that assessment serves both to evaluate learning and to actively support its ongoing development.

When designing assessments, decisions about the type, timing, and purpose of assessment activities are often guided by considering what we want assessment to achieve. Assessment of learning focuses on judging and validating achievement against intended learning outcomes; assessment for learning uses feedback and opportunities for practice to support improvement; and assessment as learning encourages students to reflect, evaluate their own progress, and develop the ability to make informed judgments about the quality of their work.

In practice, effective assessment design usually involves a thoughtful combination of all three purposes, with the balance depending on the needs of learners, the discipline, and the stage of a programme. Together, these perspectives help ensure that assessment is both rigorous and meaningful, providing credible evidence of achievement while also contributing to students’ ongoing development as confident, independent learners.

Assessment of learning aims to determine the extent to which students have achieved the intended learning outcomes at the end of a lesson, unit, or course, and is most commonly enacted through summative assessment. Crucially, assessment of learning serves a valuable purpose, particularly where programmes must provide credible evidence that graduates have achieved the intended learning outcomes and possess the knowledge, skills, and competencies required for professional or academic progression.

However, integrating assessment ‘for’ and ‘as’ learning where appropriate enables assessment to extend beyond certification by supporting ongoing learner development and encouraging participants to actively engage in and regulate their own learning during and beyond the course. A balanced approach recognises that assessment of, for, and as learning each serve distinct but complementary purposes, and should be thoughtfully integrated across a programme to best support both achievement and lifelong learning.

Key Characteristics

The key characteristics of assessment OF learning are:

  • Nature: Graded and judgement-oriented, used to evaluate achievement, certify competence and inform progression decisions.
  • Timing: Typically occurs after a period of learning, such as the end of a module, semester or programme.
  • Focus: Measures achievement against learning outcomes, standards, competencies, regulations and assessment criteria.
  • Decision-making: Provides evidence that informs decisions about progression, awards, qualifications and future learning pathways.
  • Influence on learning: Shapes what students prioritise and how they allocate effort. May encourage strategic and surface learning, grade orientation, curriculum narrowing and reduced intrinsic motivation.

While assessment of learning provides valuable evidence of what students have achieved, assessment can also serve a broader purpose: supporting students’ learning as it develops. Although these purposes are often discussed separately, they are not entirely distinct in practice. The same assessment activity may generate evidence of achievement while also providing opportunities for feedback, reflection, and improvement.

Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting students’ learning. It thus differs from assessment designed primarily to serve the purposes of accountability, or of ranking, or of certifying competence (Black et al, 2004).

This definition highlights a fundamental shift in how assessment can be understood: assessment is not only a means of judging what students have learned but can also be a tool for actively supporting learning as it develops. The defining feature of assessment for learning is therefore not the method of assessment itself, but the purpose it serves.

If an assessment is designed primarily to help students learn, improve, and make progress, it can be understood as assessment for learning. Rather than being used solely to generate grades, certify achievement of learning outcomes, or rank students, these assessments provide formative information and feedback that students can use to reflect on their learning, identify areas for improvement, and set future learning goals. Assessment for learning also provides instructors with insights into students’ developing understanding, enabling them to adapt their teaching approaches to better respond to learners’ needs. Unlike assessment of learning, which typically occurs at the end of a learning period, assessment for learning is embedded throughout the learning process.

A Note on Terminology: Advocates for Assessment for learning will often use the term 'feedforward' instead of 'feedback' to denote a focus on providing guidance that informs and improves future learning, rather than simply evaluating past performance.

Key Characteristics

The key characteristics of assessment for learning are:

  • Nature: Primarily developmental rather than judgement-oriented. Assessment information is used to support learning improvement. It may be ungraded or involve low-weighted assessment tasks that generate feedback and feed-forward.
  • Timing: Occurs throughout the learning process, enabling students and teachers to identify strengths, address gaps and make adjustments while learning is still taking place.
  • Focus: Focusses on learning processes, progress, feedback, dialogue, feed-forward, and the use of assessment evidence to enhance learning and teaching.
  • Decision-making: Provides information that helps students and educators to identify strengths, address areas for development and determine appropriate next steps for learning and teaching.
  • Influence on learning: Strongly influences students' engagement with feedback and their willingness to act on it. When feedback is timely, meaningful and actionable it can enhance motivation, confidence and learning. When feedback is unclear, delayed or not acted upon, its impact may be limited.
  • Typical examples: Written, audio or verbal feedback; peer feedback activities; draft submissions; classroom questioning; formative quizzes; feedback on teaching from students; feed-forward guidance; and low-weighted assessment tasks designed to support learning improvement.

Important to note: Assessment for learning is not only about supporting students; it also provides instructors with insights they can use to adapt and improve their teaching.

Having explored how assessment can measure learning (assessment of learning) and support learning (assessment for learning), we now turn to a third perspective: assessment as learning. This approach places students at the centre of the assessment process, encouraging them to reflect on their understanding, monitor their progress, and make informed decisions about their next steps. Assessment becomes not only something done to learners or for learners, but a process in which learners actively participate in evaluating and shaping their own learning, or something they actively ‘do’ themselves.

Assessment as Learning is the ultimate goal, where students are their own best assessors. At some point, students will need to be self-motivating and able to bring their talents and knowledge to bear on the decisions and problems that make up their lives.  They can’t just wait for the teacher (…) to tell them whether or not the answer is “right.” (Earle, L, 2003).

One might say that assessment ‘as’ learning is a form of assessment ‘for’ learning, but just with a different emphasis. Both are concerned with improving learning rather than simply measuring it, but they differ in who is primarily using the assessment information and what capacity the assessment is intended to develop. Rather than focusing primarily on how assessment information can be used by educators to support improvement, assessment as learning emphasises developing learners’ capacity to evaluate their own progress, monitor their understanding, and regulate their own learning. 

Although both approaches support learning, they do so in different ways. The table below highlights the key differences between assessment for learning and assessment as learning.

Assessment FOR Learning Assessment AS Learning
Main purpose: To provide information that helps shape the next steps in teaching and learning. Main purpose: To help students monitor, regulate and direct their own learning. 
Key assessor: The lecturer uses evidence of learning to decide what support, feedback or teaching is needed next. Key assessor: The student uses evidence of learning to judge their own understanding and decide on what to do next.
Example: A lecturer provides feedback on a draft submission, helping students to identify strengths, areas for improvement, and the next steps for developing their work.  Example: A student reflects on a draft submission against a provided rubric, evaluates the quality of their own work, identifies gaps in their understanding, and sets goals for how they will improve their work.
Guiding question: How can assessment help learners move forward? Guiding question: How can assessment help learners become better judges of their own progress?
Focus: Feedback supports improvement and informs teaching. Focus: Reflection and self-assessment build learners' capacity for self-monitoring and evaluation.

In practice, the term ‘assessment as learning’ can be used to signify any assessment in which priority is given to learners:

  • Self-assessing
  • Setting their own goals and monitoring their own progress towards them
  • Judging the quality of their own work using criteria they understand (evaluative judgement)
  • Validating and questioning their own thinking
  • Practicing, refining, and evaluating their own approaches so as to become confident, competent self-assessors
  • Engaging in 'metacognitive' practices, i.e. 'thinking about their own thinking' and learning, so that they can be aware of, reflect on, and manage how they learn,

Adapted from Earl and Katz (2006, 43). 

Key Characteristics

The key characteristics of assessment as learning are:

  • Nature: Primarily learner-centred and developmental. Students play an active role in monitoring, evaluating and regulating their own learing. Activities can be low stakes or ungraded, but assessment as learning can also be incorporated within graded tasks.
  • Timing: Occurs throughout the learning process, supporting students in monitoring their progress and preparing for future learning.
  • Focus: Focusses on self-monitoring, self-regulation, meta-cognition, reflection, and students' active engagement with feedback and learning processes.
  • Decision Making: Helps students to identify strengths, recognise areas for development, and decide how they will improve their learning. It supports the development of learners' capacity to make informed judgements about the quality of their own work.
  • Influence on Learning: Encourages learner agency, confidence, responsibility, and ownership of learning. It helps students to develop the skills and habits needed to evaluate their progress, adapt their approaches to learning, and become increasingly self-regulated learners.

Drawing upon the definitions of assessment OF learning, assessment FOR learning and assessment AS learning, a distinction can be drawn between formative and summative assessment, both of which will form part of the assessment strategy in your modules:

  • Formative assessment is assessment that is used to monitor learning and provide feedback that helps students to improve and enable educators to respond to learning needs. Formative assessment is used throughout the learning process, particularly at points where feedback can inform subsequent learning. Assessment for learning and assessment as learning typically employ formative assessment.
  • Summative assessment evaluates what students have learned and determines the extent to which they have achieved the intended learning outcomes. Summative assessment typically takes place at the end of a module or unit of learning, when evidence of achievement is required for grading. Assessment of learning relies upon summative assessment.

The National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education provides an excellent overview of assessment of, for, and as learning.

To explore Assessment and Feedback in more depth,  sign up for our Assessment and Feedback micro-credential.

Assessment Guidance Home
Principles of Good Assessment