Assessment

In the ACT Senior Secondary System students studying a semester unit are expected to complete three to five summative tasks per semester.  The BSSS provides advice regarding submission of summative assessment in course documents. Students must receive a Unit Outline in the first two weeks of the unit, and which outlines the nature of the unit, the assessment task types and due dates. You will generate the Unit Outline using ACS and it will guide you to provide the required information. 

Assessments can consist of smaller parts, but should NOT consist of weekly quizzes or the like. It is important that assessment in senior secondary allows for students to demonstrate knowledge, understanding and skills described in the the A grade descriptor, which can be difficult in small quizzes. Further, students need a chance to test their learning in low stakes contexts. Consider weekly quizzes for formative rather than summative assessment.

Students must receive feedback on their assessments and retain a copy of their task with feedback, including a letter grade and a numerical score. In Workshop Two, we will discuss the importance of quality assessment design in more detail.

If a student misses an in-class task, e.g. speaking task, work simulation, exam, either a medical certificate or statutory declaration are needed to explain the illness or misadventure that has been encountered in order to allow either a later sitting of the assessment, without penalty, or an estimate. There are strict guidelines for in-class assessment in order to achieve equity within the group in a school, and across the system. 

For an assignment, a 5% penalty is applied for each calendar day a submission is late up to a maximum of 7 days late, which then becomes a notional zero. The notional zero will be a score, which lies between 0.1 of a standard deviation below the lowest genuine score for that item and zero. Note: if the lowest genuine score is zero, the notional zero is zero.  

Students can apply for special provisions around assessment, if they need extra support to complete tasks or to meet due dates, such as extensions to due dates. In most cases, individual teachers do not make these determinations, but rather this responsibility falls to the Head of Faculty or responsible group at a school. They will consider applications and any evidence. Speak with your executive teacher for more details on how things work at your school. 

Students are required to submit a minimum of 70% of all assessment in a semester to pass the unit. The assessment submitted must be deemed to be a substantial attempt as well. Please see section 4 of the BSSS Policies and Procedures Manual here for more details. Always take work you suspect of being insubstantial to your executive teacher to discuss it. 

For each assessment task specified in the Unit Outline, students are to receive clear statements on the task cover sheet/notification about what is required and under what conditions it will be undertaken, and the assessment criteria or rubric. Each course classification and grade, A/T/M/V, 11 and 12, must have their own information. You will use ACS to generate these tasks and some of this information will be drawn directly from the Unit Outline. There are useful guides in the ACS help menu to support you in generating tasks on ACS. 

• Course Title

• Unit Title, Value, Semester, and Year

• Due date or time allowed, as appropriate for the task

• Weighting, as specified on the Unit Outline

• Clear instructions regarding the nature of the task

• Clear statement of conditions under which the task will be undertaken, including any policy around the submission of drafts

• Explicit task specific criteria for assessment and/or marking schemes, e.g. rubrics, point allocations, assessment criteria

• Reference to BSSS policies on penalties for late submission/ misadventure, academic integrity, including AI provisions, and appeals

• Where work is completed outside of class, reference to the requirement for the student to include a statement that the work presented is their own

• For V classes, a clear statement of which competencies are attached to specific questions or aspects of the task.

These details will normally be specified on a task coversheet for take-homes and in-classes.  

If any third party applications are used for assessment purposes, it is imperative that you are able to have access, such as downloading, to the questions students are asked for moderation purposes and that these questions are written with the BSSS course guidelines and Achievement Standard in mind. 

Please take note of the importance of providing consistent and equitable access to assessment, in particular for T assessment in which student work is compared and ranked. Inequitable assessment conditions can be grounds for appeal or the compromising of an assessment task. There is more flexibility to individualise assessment for A and M tasks, but assessment still be must be fair and transparent. 

Assessment is extremely consequential for students and the system. The tasks you deliver are equivalent to a HSC or VCE exam, so similar seriousness as to accuracy of information, and fair and secure systems should be ensured. Consider the public scandals that have ensued from errors in HSC and VCE exams! 

Below is an example of an ACS generated Assessment Coversheet: 

Please note the examples given provide some indication and are not an exhaustive list of task types, but rather the conditions of the task types that needs to be followed.

Teachers are free to consider a wide range of possible tasks types and innovation is encouraged. 

Every assessment item requires both a grade and a score in all units.  The score and grade recorded in the ACS Markbook must match the grade and score students receive on their returned assessment task. Any moderating that needs to be done at the assessment level must be completed before students receive their results. Markbooks will be discussed in greater detail in Workshop Two. 

Assessment tasks need to be returned to students within a timely manner so that they can digest their feedback and use that for their work on future assessment tasks. They also need time and opportunity to appeal if they conclude it is necessary. The BSSS recommends assessments tasks be given back to students within a maximum of 3 weeks of the submission date and that assessment tasks timelines allow for students to receive their feedback BEFORE the next assessment task is due. This means that teachers need to meet the dates set by their schools for internal moderation processes so as not to hold up the entire faculty. 

The BSSS Quality Assessment Guidelines (QAG) document can be accessed here and provides information about writing assessments to meet the needs of students. 

As we do not have external subject based exams in the ACT, it is very important that school based assessment is written to a high standard and is a valid assessment of the curriculum. The validity of an assessment pertains to particular inferences and decisions made for a specific group of students. Inferences, drawn from the data that assessment generates, is the foundation of the ACT system. These aspects of assessment will be reviewed and feedback provided to you via the two Moderation Days held each year. You will provide important and consequential feedback to other teachers using these criteria a well, so it is important to understand them. 

Validity of an assessment will be discussed in the ACT according to six factors, which form the core of the Quality Assessment Guidelines:

• Coverage of the curriculum - Do the assessment tasks cover the curriculum, topics and concepts etc., I am aiming to cover?

• Reliability- Are the assessment tasks reliable? For example, will all students interpret the task/instructions similarly? Do they have a clear marking scheme and rubric? 

• Bias Awareness- Are there any inherent biases (gender, socio-economic status, culture, disability) evident in the assessment tasks? How will marking and moderating of the assessment ensure objectivity?

• Levels of Thinking- Have I catered for a range of ability by providing opportunities for a range of responses and thinking levels, using the necessary cognitive verbs? Can students get an A grade according to the Achievement Standards? 

• Student engagement- Are the assessment tasks accessible and inclusive? Are they contemporary and relevant for student needs? Are they comprehensible? 

• Academic Integrity- Is it easy for students to access someone's work and claim it as their own? How can I prevent this? Are they working safely and ethically? Does it mitigate AI risks? 

There are a number of workshops offered using the Quality Assessment Guidelines that run throughout the year. Look here to find the next one on the QAG or the asynchronous online version.

When writing rubrics for assessment courses, we would encourage you to complete assessment specific rubrics that use language (specifically Higher Order Thinking verbs) used in the Achievement standard and use student friendly language where possible. Take care if using generative AI to make rubrics, as it may not be able to deal with ACT senior secondary curriculum expectations. 

If you would like some help with Rubric writing the BSSS offers an online course on rubric writing that you can access here and accredits you with three hours of TQI accredited Professional learning for the year if you complete the course.

Information on Differentiating in Assessment Workshop can be accessed here.

Ethical Research Principles and Guidelines

Ensure the tasks assigned allow students to comply with the policies on the Ethical Research Principles and Guidelines. This is relevant to investigative and creative tasks that engage with live people as the object of study. It aims to ensure the safety of student, teachers and participants in studies. It prepares students for studying ethically in work and further study. You can complete an online workshop on the topic here.

Considering Generative AI

The advent of sophisticated generative AI that is freely available may allow students to submit work that is not their own with very little chance of detection. This may prevent accurate measurement of student capacity. You should assume that if students take a task home that they will have used AI to assist them. Similarly, highly predictable in-class tasks may also be vulnerable to AI usage. You should also assume you cannot distinguish AI generated work from student work and develop tasks that are less vulnerable to AI-based cheating. 

Your school will have guidelines and policies for you to follow. 

Currently, attempts to develop detection software have not been successful.  Any detection software results can only be suggestive, so conversations with students and procedural fair processes must follow. For example, students may have used AI to improve their expression and thought it was okay. As such, the limits of AI usage should be specified in the task sheet and allowable uses demonstrated. Explicitly define the appropriate use of AI in a task and accommodate this in your rubric, e.g. AI use might mean the expectation of perfect spelling and grammar is the minimum standard because you are allowing the use of AI as an editor. Indeed, if AI is to be used, it may be best not to assess expression skills at all with that task. 

Consequently, you need to consider what aspect of the discipline are you trying to assess and how generative AI might impact on it. Then you can try to design tasks that focus on what you want to know about student performance while limiting interference from AI. 

Teach students to keep their research notes, multiple drafts, and submit a record of prompts used so that they  can provide evidence of process and composition if required. If you state in the task that drafts etc. must be produced if required to justify the product, and they cannot/ will not produce evidence, then that is misconduct in itself. 

Consider heavily weighting supervised in-class tasks without digital tools, or with lock down browsers over take home work. In this context, a prepared oral presentation is not an in-class task.  

If you are interested in exploring the implications of generative AI further, you could undertake this BSSS Professional Learning online workshop- Introduction to to AI in the ACT Senior Secondary System.