The close relationship between the design of assessment and feedback and the effectiveness of learning has become more widely recognised. The impact of the National Student Survey, which has highlighted some of the deficiencies in assessment and feedback in higher education, has combined with extensive work on defining underpinning pedagogic principles or conditions for effective learning to prompt initiatives to enhance assessment and feedback in many institutions.

The Re-engineering Assessment Practices in Higher Education (REAP) project demonstrated successful large-scale re-engineering of assessment practices to deliver educational and efficiency benefits and showed the value of an approach based on articulated principles of good assessment and feedback. The REAP principles for formative assessment and feedback were developed through the project and in subsequent work, and are used within the JISC Effective Practice in a Digital Age publication which argues that technology is a valuable aid to putting the REAP principles into practice.

Assessment and feedback guidelines and principles have also been developed through other work, providing a wide choice of principles from which to select those which match most closely to an institution's mission and aspirations. The document below summarises a selection of published principles and provides links to the sources of the work.

David Nicol has produced some supporting information on the formulation and use of assessment and feedback principles. Further information on the strategic approach to transformational change taken by the REAP project, using assessment as a driver, is available in Nicol and Draper (2009) ‘A blueprint for transformational organisational change in higher education’.

A pdf version of the document should display below, or word and pdf versions are also available for download: assessment_principles.docx assessment_principles.pdf